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69 points mtlynch | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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ednite ◴[] No.44378332[source]
Your article is well done with great advice. I definitely agree that we should focus on how changes benefit the user, not just what was built.

One positive criticism: in my case (with a small user base of aprx 100), I feel it leans a bit too much into marketing. My users often want to know that a specific bug has been fixed. Release notes aren’t just about excitement, they’re also about trust and value.

Saying “Saving large files is now 10x faster” is great, but if users were dealing with crashes or freezes, it’s more helpful, and more direct, to combine your idea of clarity with the actual user experience:

“Saving large files is now 10x faster, no more freezes for files over 100MB.”

Being transparent about what was broken and now fixed is important.

Also, not sure if the article is focusing strictly on public-facing release announcements. I find it helpful to maintain a more detailed, separate internal changelog for future reference. That includes technical fixes, implementation notes, and lower-level changes that aren't relevant to users but are valuable to me.

That said, I mostly agree with your approach, and I think your method works really well for major or long-awaited feature releases.

Overall it's a good article and please take any of my feedback with a grain of salt, as my experience is mostly limited to a small user base and not large-scale or widely publicized launches.

Thanks for sharing!

replies(1): >>44378503 #
1. mtlynch ◴[] No.44378503[source]
Thanks for reading!

>Saying “Saving large files is now 10x faster” is great, but if users were dealing with crashes or freezes, it’s more helpful, and more direct, to combine your idea of clarity with the actual user experience:

That's great feedback. I'd like to come up with a better example here.

I've noticed that when developers improve user experience, they tend to focus on what was bad rather than how it's now better, but I agree that the example is a bit confusing. If the fix is about a bug in a specific scenario, you do lose something in the announcement by not explaining how you fixed that particular bug.