On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 6:42 AM, Russell Wilson <russ.wil...@gmail.com> wrote: > "Lacking a program manager, your garden-variety super-smart programmer is > going to come up with a completely baffling user interface that makes > perfect sense IF YOU'RE A VULCAN (cf. git). The best programmers are > notoriously brilliant, and have some trouble imagining what it must be like > not to be able to memorize 16 one-letter command line arguments. These > programmers then have a tendency to get attached to their first ideas, > especially when they've already written the code."
Hi Russell, I think that there's some circular logic at work in the interpretation here. "Lacking a program manager" means without a program manager (to me, at least) "your ... programmer is going to come up with a completely baffling user interface" means what it says, i.e. that Spolsky is saying that the coder will screw up the UI. While this isn't always the case, it happens often enough that there is some truth to it. My interpretation is this - in the absence of a program manager, the UI will be left to the coder, who may screw it up. And I agree with this. Anyone not with me so far? I am not sure that this infers in any way, shape, or form that the program manager will be designing the UI. What it does mean, and logicians feel free to shoot me down here, is that in the presence of a program manager, someone other than the coder will design the UI. It does not specifically state that this will not be an IxD, UxD, IA, or janitor. The absence of a thing does not denote the presence of its opposite. Best regards, Andrew -- --- Andrew Boyd http://uxaustralia.com.au -- UX Australia Conference Canberra 2009 http://uxbookclub.org -- connect, read, discuss http://govux.org -- the government user experience forum http://resilientnationaustralia.org Resilient Nation Australia ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
