The funniest thing about this is that despite having used Windows/Mac OSX/Linux interchangeably for a very long time — and other GUIs before those… I’ve never realised you can’t copy/paste files on a Mac lol
As someone who’s done development and support work professionally, it’s pretty clear that most developers don’t understand how their product is used in real life and generally they wouldn’t need to. When supporting mission critical s/w, you had to be very careful about letting a dev loose on a live box as few had any idea how to do things safely.
Back on the topic of GUIs, I know from products I’ve been involved with that a web interface that’s been designed by developers often lacks usability. In my opinion, GUI design is a specialist function in its own right — separate from the programming of it — perhaps more akin to graphic design.
Personally, what I want most from a UI is predictability — eg the same functions on the same keys and menus in all apps. What in another forum I use might be referred to as 'the principle of least surprise'. This is mostly achieved in Mac & Windows apps (although Windows is stuck with, say, a conflict between using ctrl for menu shortcuts vs their even older behaviour on the command line; Mac has its own oddities).
And then you move from the realms of mainstream office automation apps and programmers IDEs into the world of CAD or GISand suddenly you're into vastly more complex UIs usually unique in approach to each app.
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As someone who’s done development and support work professionally, it’s pretty clear that most developers don’t understand how their product is used in real life and generally they wouldn’t need to. When supporting mission critical s/w, you had to be very careful about letting a dev loose on a live box as few had any idea how to do things safely.
Back on the topic of GUIs, I know from products I’ve been involved with that a web interface that’s been designed by developers often lacks usability. In my opinion, GUI design is a specialist function in its own right — separate from the programming of it — perhaps more akin to graphic design.
Personally, what I want most from a UI is predictability — eg the same functions on the same keys and menus in all apps. What in another forum I use might be referred to as 'the principle of least surprise'. This is mostly achieved in Mac & Windows apps (although Windows is stuck with, say, a conflict between using ctrl for menu shortcuts vs their even older behaviour on the command line; Mac has its own oddities).
And then you move from the realms of mainstream office automation apps and programmers IDEs into the world of CAD or GISand suddenly you're into vastly more complex UIs usually unique in approach to each app.