Comment by NichoPaolucci
2 hours ago
Unrelated, but I love when people describe software with the phrase "just works".
It suggests a certain... simplicity that I chase in all of my developments. The amount of EFFORT to get software from "works but..." is interesting. You can get something that works 99% of the time, but that never quite fits the "just works" level of quality that we love to see.
Really, there's an immediate feeling of joy I get when I interact with software that "just works" knowing how much effort it takes to get something to that point.
It also depends what kind of software it is.
Like an application to book a haircut at a salon or log into the WiFi at a hotel that does something "on rails" and should work without any learning or training is one thing. A complex application for professional creative work is something else entirely.
Then there are the things that are just weird, like life got me looking at mobile games lately and I was really shocked to see how many of them have a horrific onboarding experience. The best games in the "clothes collecting" genre, for instance, like Love Nikki have a gentle onboarding process that teach you the game mechanics and get you into the story and maybe get you hooked. When I was developing consumer-facing social and entertainment apps (before Facebook!) I had my own belief that "easy onboarding is good for users and good for profits" and worked with founders who got it and pushed me to outdo myself. Most games in that genre have horrific UI and don't try to explain the mechanics because they could care less if users understand the currencies used in the system because they only care for the worst "whales" who click on any red dot and fold green at the slightest difficulty.
These days when it comes to "slow software", I think five years is an eternity from a platform perspective so if you start something you may need to rebuild it. Like I find it hard to justify developing on anything other than the web platform (like "write once and it runs on platforms you never thought of like VR headsets", "for christ's sake did you realize every Windows software vendor had at least one InstallShield engineer back in the 1990s and IT was pulling their hair out updating all their desktops?", "it took three weeks for the App Store to reject your update? what did you think would happen?") but the app I am working on right now depends on React components that haven't been updated since 2021 and the bill is coming due.
Oh man, the state of dress up games is a personal pet peeve of mine, poor onboarding tutorials is just one problem. The art direction is often simply atrocious, proper game loops barely exist (let alone creative ones), the microtransactions are the default business model. I honestly don't know what causes it, perhaps the games are just not that profitable so they don't attract highly skilled or at least conscientious game developers? I came to accept that they are just made by people who either dislike/don't care about games in general or dislike dress up games specifically. The best dress up games are normally made by Nintendo who have a strong game design and gave development culture in general.
P.s. As a side note, I started making small dress up games that I draw myself to scratch my own itch. I am not a programmer so they are absolutely horrendous and I only show them to friends. Making videogames is not as easy as making paper clothes for paper dolls like I did as a kid, but it is so fun and I feel 30 years younger somehow. :D