For many years now KDE has focused on polish, bug fixing and "nice-to-have" improvements rather than major redesigns, and it paid off.
I often wondered why desktop UIs became so terrible somewhere in the 2010s and I don't want to attribute it to laziness, greed, etc... People have been lazy and greedy since people existed, there must have been something else. And I think that mobile is the answer.
UI designers are facing a really hard problem, if not impossible. Most apps nowadays have desktop and mobile variants, and you want some consistency, as you don't want users to relearn everything when switching variants. But mobile platforms, with their small touchscreens are completely different from desktop platforms with their large screens, keyboards and mice. So what do you do?
In addition to mobile, you often need to target the browser too, so: native desktop, native mobile, browser desktop, browser mobile. And then you add commercial consideration like cost, brand identity, and the idea that if you didn't change the UI, you didn't change anything. Commercial considerations have always been a thing, but the multiplication of platforms made it worse, prompting for the idea of running everything in a browser, and having the desktop inferface just being the mobile interface with extra stuff.
You keep the UIs separate. Dumbing down desktop UIs to mobile capabilities is just as bad of a design as it was when people tried to jam a desktop UI into mobile. You have to play to the strengths of the platform you are on, not limit each one based on the other. Yes, it's more work, but it's well worth it to have a product which is actually good.
Attitudes like this sometimes make me regret going in to software engineering. I understand time may be of the essence in some instances, but I feel like software engineering has lost much of its craftsmanship, and it's now just gluing over-engineered and poorly designed shitware together. At least, in the Web Dev world -- maybe other subfields have faired better?
It's not just software. I'm very pro-business / pro-capitalism but I will happily agree that an omnipresent business pressure is to reduce costs and get products and services to market rapidly.
My wife and I bought an antique store this year, and we're converting it into a small live theatre with a magic (stage magic) retail store up front. We are pouring our hearts and soul into this and are trying to bring a high degree of craftsmanship into the venture. We're taking queues from Walt Disney World and want you to feel like you've stepped into a completely different world when you step inside our doors.
Yet now that we're running out of money and things have taken way longer than we had estimated, we have to cut scope. We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."
That's business and you see enshitification in all industries. We can see this in everything from clothing to furniture to product packaging. The incentive is always to try and deliver things to market faster and cheaper and this necessitates making cuts. Craftsmanship is a luxury that we all pine for. And there are small mom & pop shops (us included) that try to deliver craftsmanship. But the market for high-cost products with high-craftsmanship is niche.
Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less and that high-craftsmanship furniture was often passed down from one generation to another because it's not like people could typically afford that stuff. It was that people had to save, DIY more, own less and count on hand-me-downs.
Sure. In many instances, software is just a means to an end. Software is usually not the business itself. So, I understand there has to be balance at some point. In fact, I think it's dangerous to sometimes reinvent the wheel -- like rolling your own auth system. I rather go with a well tested and trusted solution.
> I bought an antique store
I'm jealous. I would love something like this.
Are/were you a developer? If yes, then I am curious about one thing. Does your work towards your store bring more or less fulfillment than your dev life? I went into the field hoping to find passion and to strive for some sense of glory that comes from craftsmanship, but I learned quickly there isn't much passion left and there is absolutely no glory. Though in my mind, programming does not equal software engineering. The people writing KDE are programmers. The person working for a company is a software engineer.
> We have to start thinking "What needs to be done today in order for us to open" vs "What can we defer and iterate on and do later?" What are the "nice to haves" and what are the "must haves."
I just had this conversation at work today lol.
> Software is largely targeting the mass market just like clothing and furniture - other examples where you've seen "high craftsmanship" in the past but these days we get mass produced disposable garbage. It's tempting to say "the good old days" but people had a lot less
You are absolutely correct. However, maybe I am just consumed by ignorance, but I think that is the world I want to live in, you know? I watched a YouTube video about a traditional Japanese swordsmith. He runs the only remaining school left in Japan. He follows the exact same process that has been used for something like over 700 years. He has a few apprentices, but nothing is written down. It's all passed down from generation to generation via hands-on work and word of mouth.
For software, that would be beyond unrealistic, but I think there is something utterly beautiful about getting lost in some kind of project and pouring 100% of oneself into their work. You know, to be apart of something much bigger than oneself?
I think about the KDE developers per the thread topic. KDE is likely highly useful and an act for charity for their fellow Linux users. KDE accomplishes what it sought to solve. However, most users will never know or understand what into making KDE, why some choices were made and not others, etc.. As long as KDE works, many users probably won't even think about KDE at all. If I were to install KDE right now, I could tell you if it works or not. I cannot tell you if KDE was written well just by using it, unless overt issues were present. I would truly have no idea about the quality without looking at the source code.
Though, I guess my fundamental point is that you are correct about everything you wrote. I do not disagree with any of it. I am in my early 30s, and I guess I am already jaded haha. This is what "work" and "life" are mostly about? This is how I provide value to society? I just push little plastic buttons on a device and the little electrons flowing through the device make the screen change colors. I went to college just for all this? Don't get me wrong, I love programming, but man, the "adult" or "business" world is just so utterly... fucking boring and unfulfilling haha. Do you know what I mean?