Web designers have been having this same debate for 15 years - what many call "mobile-first design" is actually just worsening the experience of desktop users so that things look nicer on phones and the makers don't have to do double the design work.

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hirvi74 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> the makers don't have to do double the design work.

Attitudes like this sometimes make me regret going in to software engineering. I understand time may be of the essence in some instances, but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship, and it's now just gluing over-engineered and poorly designed shitware together. At least, in the Web Dev world -- maybe other subfields have faired better?

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pjmlp 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It gets even worse, when doing projects where you are basically glueing SaaS products together, the common trend in enterprise consulting.

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guappa 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://xkcd.com/1988/

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gspencley 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship

It's not just software. I'm very pro-business / pro-capitalism but I will happily agree that an omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly.

My wife and I bought an antique store this year, and we're converting it into a small live theatre with a magic (stage magic) retail store up front. We are pouring our hearts and soul into this and are trying to bring a high degree of craftsmanship into the venture. We're taking queues from Walt Disney World and want you to feel like you've stepped into a completely different world when you step inside our doors.

Yet now that we're running out of money and things have taken way longer than we had estimated, we have to cut scope. We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."

That's business and you see enshitification in all industries. We can see this in everything from clothing to furniture to product packaging. The incentive is always to try and deliver things to market faster and cheaper and this necessitates making cuts. Craftsmanship is a luxury that we all pine for. And there are small mom & pop shops (us included) that try to deliver craftsmanship. But the market for high-cost products with high-craftsmanship is niche.

Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less and that high-craftsmanship furniture was often passed down from one generation to another because it's not like people could typically afford that stuff. It was that people had to save, DIY more, own less and count on hand-me-downs.

	▲	hirvi74 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly. Sure. In many instances, software is just a means to an end. Software is usually not the business itself. So, I understand there has to be balance at some point. In fact, I think it's dangerous to sometimes reinvent the wheel -- like rolling your own auth system. I rather go with a well tested and trusted solution. > I bought an antique store I'm jealous. I would love something like this. Are/were you a developer? If yes, then I am curious about one thing. Does your work towards your store bring more or less fulfillment than your dev life? I went into the field hoping to find passion and to strive for some sense of glory that comes from craftsmanship, but I learned quickly there isn't much passion left and there is absolutely no glory. Though in my mind, programming does not equal software engineering. The people writing KDE are programmers. The person working for a company is a software engineer. > We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves." I just had this conversation at work today lol. > Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less You are absolutely correct. However, maybe I am just consumed by ignorance, but I think that is the world I want to live in, you know? I watched a YouTube video about a traditional Japanese swordsmith. He runs the only remaining school left in Japan. He follows the exact same process that has been used for something like over 700 years. He has a few apprentices, but nothing is written down. It's all passed down from generation to generation via hands-on work and word of mouth. For software, that would be beyond unrealistic, but I think there is something utterly beautiful about getting lost in some kind of project and pouring 100% of oneself into their work. You know, to be apart of something much bigger than oneself? I think about the KDE developers per the thread topic. KDE is likely highly useful and an act for charity for their fellow Linux users. KDE accomplishes what it sought to solve. However, most users will never know or understand what into making KDE, why some choices were made and not others, etc.. As long as KDE works, many users probably won't even think about KDE at all. If I were to install KDE right now, I could tell you if it works or not. I cannot tell you if KDE was written well just by using it, unless overt issues were present. I would truly have no idea about the quality without looking at the source code. Though, I guess my fundamental point is that you are correct about everything you wrote. I do not disagree with any of it. I am in my early 30s, and I guess I am already jaded haha. This is what "work" and "life" are mostly about? This is how I provide value to society? I just push little plastic buttons on a device and the little electrons flowing through the device make the screen change colors. I went to college just for all this? Don't get me wrong, I love programming, but man, the "adult" or "business" world is just so utterly... fucking boring and unfulfilling haha. Do you know what I mean?

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thescriptkiddie 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

this reminds me of something i've observed. it seems like there is a general trend in software of doing things that look good (either in an ad or in a sprint review) rather than things that feel good to use. one example among many is nvidia's frame generation feature, which makes 60 fps look like 120 fps when you're watching somebody else play, but feel like 30 fps when you're the one playing.

	▲	seec 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Image and projection of that image is very important for most humans. You just need to look at how some people dress in order to "look good" even though it often requires them to make some ridiculous compromises on confort.

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gspencley 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not so much double the design work, it's double the code maintenance.

I'm of two minds on this. I agree with your complaint that "mobile first" (or just responsiveness in general) has tended to reduce the pleasantness of the Desktop experience. As a web application developer, the idea of having to maintain two separate codebases - one for mobile and one for desktop - is a big "no thank-you." So responsiveness tends to win on maintenance overhead.

	▲	einpoklum 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> It's not so much double the design work, it's double the code maintenance. Well, of course it is: Different UI, different UI code. If that's problem, the developers should not have both a mobile and a desktop app in the first place. > has tended to reduce the pleasantness of the Desktop understatement of the year :-) ... it often hampers functionality, significantly, and makes the experience rather painful.

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seec 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The moment the "mobile first" trend appeared, I knew it was wrong and we were certainly fucked for many things. Plenty of websites are just bad because of this nonsense. And since now most people don't even use a computer for their web browsing, most websites are bad for computer browsing by default.

The insanity of it is that many websites push their mobile apps to use them. So, you get shitty mobile sites that ask you to use their app on mobile and are bad on desktop because of the stupid development philosophy (including poor information density and oversized interface for big touch targets).

The whole point of the first iPhone web browser was that you could actually use most typical websites without any effort on their part and it was good enough. Because of the display size and navigation effort required it wasn't the most confortable but the more time passes the more I believe that was kind of the point and almost a "feature" in itself.

We got there because people are glued to their phone, and sadly it's not even a good tool for efficient web browsing (it's useful for quick information gathering but that's it).