On the Nature of my Damage

Recently I have realised that at a very early age my attitudes towards and interactions with computers were permanently damaged. Like all geeks, I first started programming in primary school. And like many geeks my age, the first computer I had to program was an Apple //e. My Dad had lots of books for the Apple //e, so I had a lot to work through. But once he got a Mac, I wanted to program that as well.

The seduction of more power, I guess.

Well, times were tough in the Northern Territory: the only book I could find even vaguely on programming the Mac was The Apple Human Interface Guidelines. The original edition, by Tog, from the mid-1980's. That was it. And this was, of course, long before general Internet availability.

What was I going to do? That was all I had, so that's what I read. Cover to cover. Twice.

The Apple HIG is a somewhat unusual technical manual. Instead of just documenting all the available possibilities, dispassionately and exhaustively, this book took a very firm position. There was a right way to do things and things must be done the right way. The HIG then set out to list the right ways and the wrong ways, with justifications.

This preaching about the true path was both low-level and high-level: as well as detailed instructions on how to place and label buttons, it was also about how to design whole programs for the smoothest and most consistent interaction with the user.

And there was installed my damage. That book didn't just encourage good UIs, it demanded them. And now it seems that I demand a lot from computers. Computers shouldn't be hard to use, in fact we shouldn't even notice that we're using them at all.

Now every time I have to do something just so the computer knows what's going on (like 'Save') or I have to jump through a hoop because it's easier for me to jump then the programmer to write their software well, I feel a deep sense of annoyance. It doesn't have to be this way, dammit! Computers are meant to free us from drudgery to allow us more time to do the things we enjoy. Or, more cynically, the jobs we're more efficient at. Either way, doesn't matter to me. But, most of all, computers don't have to be this way. It isn't that much harder to do the right thing. We could do the right thing in the 1980's; we can do the right thing now.

As a programmer I could be frustrated and demoralised by the state of my industry. Maybe later. For now I choose to rant and rail against this, and fight. Much to the endless delight of my highly fortunate colleagues.