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837 points turrini | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.222s | source
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alkonaut ◴[] No.43973126[source]
"The world" runs on _features_ not elegant, fast, or bug free software. To the end user, there is no difference between a lack of a feature, and a bug. Nor is there any meaningful difference between software taking 5 minutes to complete something because of poor performance, compared to the feature not being there and the user having to spend 5 minutes completing the same task manually. It's "slow".

If you keep maximizing value for the end user, then you invariably create slow and buggy software. But also, if you ask the user whether they would want faster and less buggy software in exchange for fewer features, they - surprise - say no. And even more importantly: if you ask the buyer of software, which in the business world is rarely the end user, then they want features even more, and performance and elegance even less. Given the same feature set, a user/buyer would opt for the fastest/least buggy/most elegant software. But if it lacks any features - it loses. The reason to keep software fast and elegant is because it's the most likely path to be able to _keep_ adding features to it as to not be the less feature rich offering. People will describe the fast and elegant solution with great reviews, praising how good it feels to use. Which might lead people to think that it's an important aspect. But in the end - they wouldn't buy it at all if it didn't do what they wanted. They'd go for the slow frustrating buggy mess if it has the critical feature they need.

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xg15 ◴[] No.43973469[source]
Almost all of my nontechnical friends and family members have at some point complained about bloated and overly complicated software that they are required to use.

Also remember that Microsoft at this point has to drag their users kicking and screaming into using the next Windows version. If users were let to decide for themselves, many would have never upgraded past Windows XP. All that despite all the pretty new features in the later versions.

I'm fully with you that businesses and investors want "features" for their own sake, but definitely not users.

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1. jeroenhd ◴[] No.43981310[source]
Every time I offer alternatives to slow hardware, people find a missing feature that makes them stick to what they're currently using. Other times the features are there but the buttons for it are in another place and people don't want to learn something new. And that's for free software, with paid software things become even worse because suddenly the hours they spend on loading times is worthless compared to a one-time fee.

Complaining about slow software happens all the time, but when given the choice between features and performance, features win every time. Same with workflow familiarity; you can have the slowest, most broken, hacked together spreadsheet-as-a-software-replacement mess, but people will stick to it and complain how bad it is unless you force them to use a faster alternative that looks different.