Tags: dx

Something went wrong · molily

Debating complexity is pointless because it’s a subjective metric. Every developer has a different gut feeling about simplicity, complexity and the appropriate amount of complexity for a given task. When people try to find an objective definition, they come to wildly different results. And that’s okay.

Instead, we should focus on hard metrics from a user perspective. Performance, efficiency, compatibility, accessibility and fault-tolerance can be measured, tested and evaluated, automatically and manually.

Any amount of complexity is fine as long as these goals are met.

Cory has published the transcript of his talk at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. It’s all about enshittification, and what we can collectively do to reverse it.

He succinctly describes the process of enshittification like this:

First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

More importantly, he describes the checks and balances that keep enshittification from happening, all of which have been dismantled over time: competition, regulation, self-help, and workers.

One of the factors that allows enshittification to proceed is a high switching cost:

Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time.

We’ve seen this play out over at Twitter, where people I used to respect are still posting there as if it hasn’t become a cesspool of far-right racist misogyny reflecting its new owner’s values. But for a significant amount of people—including myself and anyone with a modicum of decency—the switching cost wasn’t enough to stop us getting the hell out of there. Echoing Robin’s observation, Cory says:

…the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call ‘pivoting.’

Anyway, I bring this up because I recently read something else about switching costs, but in a very different context. Jake Lazaroff was talking about JavaScript frameworks:

I want to talk about one specific weakness of JavaScript frameworks: interoperability, or the lack thereof. Almost without exception, each framework can only render components written for that framework specifically.

As a result, the JavaScript community tends to fragment itself along framework lines. Switching frameworks has a high cost, especially when moving to a less popular one; it means leaving most of the third-party ecosystem behind.

That switching cost stunts framework innovation by heavily favoring incumbents with large ecosystems.

Sounds a lot like what Cory was describing with incumbents like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.

And let’s not kid ourselves, when we’re talking about incumbent client-side JavaScript frameworks, we might mention Vue or some other contender, but really we’re talking about React.

React has massive switching costs. For over a decade now, companies have been hiring developers based on one criterion: do they know React?

“An expert in CSS you say? No thanks.”

“Proficient in vanilla JavaScript? Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Heck, if I were advising someone who was looking for a job in front-end development (as opposed to actually being good at front-end development; two different things), I’d tell them to learn React.

Just as everyone ended up on Facebook because everyone was on Facebook, everyone ended up using React because everyone was using React.

You can probably see where I’m going with this: the inevitable enshittification of React.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about React getting shittier in terms of what it does. It’s always been a shitty technology for end users:

React is legacy tech from 2013 when browsers didn’t have template strings or a BFCache.

No, I’m talking about the enshittification of the developer experience …the developer experience being the thing that React supposedly has going for it, though as Simon points out, the developer experience has always been pretty crap:

Whether on purpose or not, React took advantage of this situation by continuously delivering or promising to deliver changes to the library, with a brand new API being released every 12 to 18 months. Those new APIs and the breaking changes they introduce are the new shiny objects you can’t help but chase. You spend multiple cycles learning the new API and upgrading your application. It sure feels like you are doing something, but in reality, you are only treading water.

Well, it seems like the enshittification of the React ecosystem is well underway. Cassidy is kind of annoyed at React. Tom is increasingly miffed about the state of React releases, and Matteo asks React, where are you going?

Personally, I would love it if more people were complaining about the dreadful user experience inflicted by client-side React. Instead the complaints are universally about the developer experience.

I guess doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is fine. It’s just a little dispiriting.

I sometimes feel like I’m living that old joke, where I’m the one in the restaurant saying “the food here is terrible!” and most of my peers are saying “I know! And such small portions!”

I went to TEDxBrighton on Friday. I didn’t actually realise it was happening until just a couple of days beforehand, but I once I knew, I figured I should take advantage of it being right here in my own town.

All in all, it was a terrific day. The MCing by Adam Pearson was great—just the right mix of enthusiasm and tongue-in-cheek humour. The curation of the line-up worked well too. The day was broken up into four loosely-themed sections. As I’m currently in the process of curating an event myself, I can appreciate how challenging it is.

Each section opened with a musical act. Again, having been involved behind the scenes with many events myself, I was impressed by the audaciousness, just from a logistical perspective. It all went relatively smoothly.

The talks at a TED or TEDx event can be a mixed bag. You can have a scientist on stage distilling years of research into a succint message followed by someone talking nonsense about some pseudo-psychological self-help scheme. But at TEDxBrighton, we lucked out.

A highlight for me was Dr James Mannion talking about implementation science—something that felt directly applicable to design work. Victoria Jenkins was also terrific, and again, her points about inclusive design felt very relevant. And of course I really enjoyed the space-based talks by Melissa Thorpe and Bianca Cefalo. Now that I think about it, just about everyone was great: Katie Vincent, Lewis Wedlock, Dina Nayeri—they all wowed me.

With one exception. There was a talk that was supposed to be about the future of democracy. In reality it quickly veered into DAOs before descending into a pitch for crypto and NFTs. The call to action was literally for everyone in the audience to go out and get a crypto wallet and buy an NFT …using ethereum no less! We were exhorted to use an unbelievably wasteful and energy-intensive proof-of-work technology to get our hands on a receipt for a JPG …from the same stage that would later highlight the work of climate activists like Tommie Eaton. It was really quite disgusting. The fear-based message of the talk was literally about getting in on the scheme before it’s too late. At one point we were told to “do the research.” I’m surprised we weren’t all told that we’re “not going to make it.”

A disgraceful shill for a ponzi scheme would’ve ruined any other event. Fortunately the line-up at TEDxBrighton was so strong that one scam artist couldn’t torpedo the day. Just like crypto itself—and associated bollocks like NFTs and web3—it was infuriating to have to sit through it in the short term, but then it just faded away into insignificance. One desperate peddler of snake oil couldn’t make a dent in an otherwise great day.

Web tech is better. Developer norms are worse. | Go Make Things

The web historically moves in waves.

Libraries are created to push complex features in an easier way. Then the libraries themselves get complicated, often more so than the benefits they provide.

Eventually, (some of) the core features of those libraries make their way into the browser itself, but the libraries linger like water on the shore, slowly receding.

And before the sand has a chance to fully dry, a new set of libraries washes in to push the web even further.

Making Reasonable Use of Computer Resources

The paradox of performance:

This era of incredibly fast hardware is also the era of programs that take tens of seconds to start from an SSD or NVMe disk; of bloated web applications that take many seconds to show a simple list, even on a broadband connection; of programs that process data at a thousandth of the speed we should expect. Software is laggy and sluggish — and the situation shows little signs of improvement. Why is that?

Because we prioritise the developer experience over the user experience, that’s why:

Although our job is ostensibly to create programs that let users do stuff with their computers, we place a greater emphasis on the development process and dev-oriented concerns than on the final user product.

We would do well to heed Craig’s observations on Fast Software, the Best Software.

Breaking the Deadlock Between User Experience and Developer Experience · An A List Apart Article

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Our efforts to measure and improve UX are packed with tragically ironic attempts to love our users: we try to find ways to improve our app experiences by bloating them with analytics, split testing, behavioral analysis, and Net Promoter Score popovers. We stack plugins on top of third-party libraries on top of frameworks in the name of making websites “better”—whether it’s something misguided, like adding a carousel to appease some executive’s burning desire to get everything “above the fold,” or something truly intended to help people, like a support chat overlay. Often the net result is a slower page load, a frustrating experience, and/or (usually “and”) a ton of extra code and assets transferred to the browser.

Even tools that are supposed to help measure performance in order to make improvements—like, say, Real User Monitoring—require you to add a script to your web pages …thereby increasing the file size and degrading performance! It’s ironic, in that Alanis Morissette sense of not understanding what irony is.

Stacking tools upon tools may solve our problems, but it’s creating a Jenga tower of problems for our users.

This is a great article about evaluating technology.

edX Pattern Library · The Visual, UI, and Front End styleguide for edX’s applications

A nicely documented pattern library.

Responsive Field Day

All the videos from the excellent Responsive Field Day are now available. Even better, the audio is also available for your huffduffing pleasure!

All the presentations and panels were great. Sophie Shepherd’s terrific talk has really stuck with me.

Jeremy Keith - Responsive Field Day 2015 - YouTube

Here’s the 20 minute talk I gave at the inaugural Responsive Field Day in Portland.

I spoke at Responsive Field Day here in Portland on Friday. It was an excellent event. All the talks were top notch.

The day flew by, with each talk clocking in at just 20 minutes, in batches of three followed by a quick panel discussion. It was a great format …but I knew it would be. See, Responsive Field Day was basically Responsive Day Out relocated to Portland.

Jason told me last year how inspired he was by the podcast recordings from Responsive Day Out and how much he and Lyza wanted to do a Responsive Day Out in Portland. I said “Go for it!” although I advised changing to the name to something a bit more American (having a “day out” at the seaside feels very British—a “field day” works perfectly as the US equivalent). Well, Jason, Lyza, and everyone at Cloud Four should feel very proud of their Responsive Field Day—it was wonderful.

As the day unfolded on Friday, I found myself being quite moved. It was genuinely touching to see my conference template replicated not only in format, but also in spirit. It was affordable (“Every expense spared!” was my motto), inclusive, diverse, and fast-paced. It was a lovely, lovely feeling to think that I had, in some small way, provided some inspiration for such a great event.

Jessica pointed out that isn’t the first time I’ve set up an event template for others to follow. When I organised the first Science Hack Day in London a few years ago, I never could have predicted how amazingly far Ariel would take the event. Fifty Science Hack Days in multiple countries—fifty! I am in awe of Ariel’s dedication. And every time I see pictures or video from a Science Hack Day in some far-flung location I’ve never been to, and I see the logo festooning the venue …I get such a warm fuzzy glow.

Y’know, when you’re making something—whether it’s an event, a website, a book, or anything else—it’s hard to imagine what kind of lifespan it might have. It’s probably just as well. I think it would be paralysing and overwhelming to even contemplate in advance. But in retrospect …it sure feels nice.

I was so close to bringing my ancient copy of DOM Scripting to @rfdpdx for @adactio to sign.

— Tom Dale (@tomdale) September 25, 2015

Want to help prevent online bullying? Comment on Facebook

Proving something that Derek Powazek told us 15 years ago:

When we clearly show what is and is not acceptable, the tone does change. People who want to share thoughtful comments start to feel that theirs are welcome, and people who want to spew hatred start to realize theirs are not.

D’hear that, Reddit?

TEDxSummerisle

Oh, God!

Oh, Jesus Christ!

Hacking the Future: Clare Sutcliffe at TEDxBrighton - YouTube

A great short talk from Clare about Code Club.