The Spatial Miscellany

I help to design software, it’s my day job. A smile crept across my face when a friend sent me a link to the following video:

Obviously, it’s a great plug for his book, but David Platt makes a good point in the video clip and something we continue to remain aware of here at ESRI. On this front I think ESRI make a fair effort, and a lot of time and energy is invested to ensure it’s the ‘end user’ experience that drives software development. For example, all our core software engineers are loosely coupled to product engineers (or product specialists), and it’s the product engineers that drive software development from an ‘end user’ perspective – at least that’s the theory; sometimes we get it right, sometimes there is room for improvement.

After watching the clip I surfed to Dave’s website whysoftwaresucks.com, where he has posted a sample chapter, I think he makes a valid remark when he states:

“The designers of the earliest computer programs didn’t care about making their products easy to use. Solving the computing problem at hand, for example, dealing with a printer to make the words come out properly on paper, was so difficult that no one had time or money left over for making a user’s life easier. A computer’s thinking time was enormously expensive, much more so than the user’s time. Forcing the human user to memorize complicated commands, instead of using computer power to provide a menu listing them, made economic sense. The relative costs are now reversed, of course, but almost everyone in the industry older than about 30 grew up in that type of environment. It can’t help but shape our thinking today, no matter how hard we try to leave it behind. Think of your older relatives who grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930’s, who even today can’t bear to throw away a sock with only one hole in it.”

Do GIS developers drive shift sticks?