Whole-known-network
<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.transneptune.net/@owen" class="u-url mention">@<span>owen</span></a></span> oh i mean. i think there are some kinds of software that work like the thing i'm describing in this thread ("i shouldn't have to think, it should just conform to my intuition") and sometimes it works like you're describing ("models are powerful, the user should learn the model"). Maybe there's a synthesis where the software is "self-teaching", the user adopts a mental model without knowing it. Maybe that's what you were trying to say. I am spitballing here not attempting to produce Theory</p>
<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mcc" class="u-url mention">@<span>mcc</span></a></span> How would you characterize the two types?</p>
<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.transneptune.net/@owen" class="u-url mention">@<span>owen</span></a></span> I think you touched on a larger idea here. I think what I'd say is fundamentally there are two different types of software and sometimes a piece of software misunderstands which one it is</p>
<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mcc" class="u-url mention">@<span>mcc</span></a></span> I disagree only in detail; I agree in the large.</p><p>All software is the realization of someone else's mental model. Since it's never your own (even if you wrote it, it was you last week or last month or last year), operating under that model requires learning it. However, software should embrace and facilitate that learning, rather than treating it like a chore to be avoided.</p>
<p>Often I complain about things in software and get baffled replies like, okay, but you can fix this arcane problem with [arcane solution], you know that right? And possibly I did know it but complain anyway because *I shouldn't have had to know it*. Your software shouldn't have needed a Theory of Operation. Your software shouldn't have required *learning*. Let me reserve my executive function for performing Useful Tasks and not like, configuring interface minutae. For a moment, let me be an idiot</p>
<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@mcc" class="u-url mention">@<span>mcc</span></a></span> this is also true about science</p><p>my advisor once described himself as "not very smart" in exactly the sense you're giving here, it stuck with me</p>
<p>The most underrated skill in tech engineering is the ability, or maybe the *willingness*, to be an idiot. Sometimes the best way to debug a problem is to forget everything you think you know and re-test the most basic things from ground zero. Sometimes the only way to design a good interface is to look at what you've made through eyes that have no idea what they're looking at. You know too much. Your users don't know anything. Be a user. If you can't be a user how can you make a thing users want</p>
<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@gamingonlinux" class="u-url mention">@<span>gamingonlinux</span></a></span> This update broke Steam for me, and a few others too judging by some threads I've read</p>
<p>Some carpentry projects barely fit in the bosun's locker.</p>
