Dear software companies:
I do not want an Experience. I want to do the thing I launched your program to do and then move on with my fucking life. I do not want to remember how your software felt to use. I want to remember the Work I did while using your software.
You are not designing an amusement park. You are designing a tool. My screwdriver is not an Experience. Building this furniture is an Experience.
Hardly anybody wakes up and says “oh boy I can’t wait to Operate Photoshop today! I love Using the Browser!”
The greatest improvement you can make to my user experience is to disappear into my subconscious. you fetch and render pages and allow me to manipulate them. You are not what gives me joy. You are the tool I chose to find it.
Make a tool worth choosing.
@Seirdy Sigh... It strikes me of marketers getting in the way of having something to sell...
Oct 25, 2026, 8:28 PM@Seirdy I like to think of myself as the Jimi Hendrix of programming, so
Oct 26, 2026, 12:28 PM
Oct 26, 2026, 12:11 PM@davidgerard @Seirdy "[it] wants to be your friend"
Fifield. From "Prometheus". He does not want to be your friend. He wants to make money. As a geologist.
(I wonder which is more honest, given he turns into a monster later in the film anyway, having been exposed to the Black Goo.)
@Seirdy Long ago I read about a study comparing people’s styles of using computers: “hard” vs “soft” mastery, which came to either swearing at the computer or begging it to please work right. I thought at the time that this isn’t mastery, mastery begins precisely when the computer vanishes, and you’re just using your mind enhanced by reliable tools which you know well enough how to use that you don’t need to think about them anymore to solve the problem.
@Seirdy most people except weirdos like us don't even like to Use The Computer
@aburka but even we mostly enjoy using software that we shape, rather than software that’s handed to us in a “take it or leave it” state.
text editors, configurable desktop environments, shells, weird offline music playback setups, software we help develop, etc. experiences we create, not experiences we consume. the experience is building something and appreciating it, not mere operation of a tool.
most products shipped by software companies do not fall into these categories.
@Seirdy @aburka But then some dingus software developer decides Everything Must Be Trivially Customizable and we wind up with nightmare applucations where one misclick or accidental keystroke upends the whole UI with no way to recover and no way to lock down the UI to protect against accidental mangling.
I want someone who understands the purpose of their tool to build it so that its primary workflow is sensible and coherent and doesn't put the burden of UI design on me. I use a tool, it works in a reasonable way for what I'm doing; if it doesn't, I uee a tool that does and ideally I never waste time configuring it. I actively don't want to be customizing my tools - that's the toolmaker's job, not mine. I resent having unwanted flexibility, genericity, and abstraction forced on me when all I want it a well thought out tool that dependably works as expected. YMMV.
Oct 26, 2026, 9:20 AM@Seirdy all business have forgotten this, it does not matter the industry. They are too heavily relying on marketing people instead of utilising marketing to GET THEIR GOOD PRODUCT IN FRONT OF PEOPLE.
Because they have forgotten that the good product is the thing they should be trying to expose people to.
Instead, it seems like everyone thinks that marketing is the finish line.
@Seirdy It seems telling how popular markdown has become, when it's simplified basic HTML. People want to use something they can comprehend.
Oct 25, 2026, 10:12 PM@Seirdy Ah but you see.
If a software is just a tool you use and then stop using, then the number will go down! How can we sell you ads if your eyes aren't peeled to our software FOREVER?
@Seirdy You are underestimating screwdriver manufacturers ;)
@Seirdy Yeah, there should be much more consideration and discussion regarding user needs, which should be understood before starting to worry about the how.
@totientfunction I should agree with you, but given the culture at most of these companies, I’d rather they stop having these discussions. They clearly don’t work.
Blame Steve Blank.
Oct 26, 2026, 11:51 AM@Seirdy every time these thoughts pass through my brain, it imagines how other every-day tools could be so much worse in the same fashion.
You want to grep for something in a file? Just watch this 30sec unskippable video first.
Oh, you'd like to use less(1) on the output of a command, don't mind that it has injected extra lines of advertising in the display.
"Would you like to improve your social graph by connecting to other folks who also use cat(1)?"
ls(1), now with cloud-storage options. It only takes a 30-second time-out to list your files now while we try to connect to our private servers but fail because the machine is offline…
The first time #awk runs, it offers you the ability to download new visual themes and colorschemes for your output.
📎 👀 "It looks like you're trying to replace words in a file with sed. Would you like some assistance? [yes] no"
New and improved tr(1), now with your favorite LLM integrations.
😑
Oct 26, 2026, 12:39 PMCompanies selling proprietary software have a vested interest in locking you into their own little world and keeping you there.
The biggest differentiator for a F/OSS project and especially for a non-profit-run F/OSS project is that they don't need to do that. Not having to do any user-hostile things to preserve their revenue stream is their killer feature.
And yet they keep hiring ludicrously expensive senior management that does not understand this.
@david_chisnall you have described the norm for smaller volunteer FOSS projects but it’s perfectly normal to see larger investor-backed FOSS projects that lock you into an ecosystem.
Oct 26, 2026, 2:40 PM@Seirdy But the Mozilla Foundation is not that. It is a non-profit with a charter to promote the open web. The fact that it keeps funding work that is directly contrary to that objective is what makes people sad.
@david_chisnall
At this point i feel like one must be willful not to admit that Google is invested in Mozilla, and Mozilla apparently has no plans to change that because the people who decide this are paid with Google money
@Seirdy
@RnDanger Google heavily reduced funding of Mozilla, so now Mozilla is increasingly reliant on the GenAI hype money. That is the main reason for the built-in LLM integrations in the Firefox web browser, to keep their corporate funders happy. Mozilla (mostly) operates similarly as any for-profit tech company, according to their own management (in public presentations on how it operates).
@autiomaa
I don't think Google reducing its funding of Mozilla was a choice either of them wanted to make, so I'm glad regulators did -something- here. I do wish the specific carve out for search bar default sponsorships would have embarrassed Mozilla leadership into hiding though
@david_chisnall @Seirdy
@Seirdy When I was still working as a PM, I had a conversation with a manager about some API changes I was speccing out.
Me: I’m basing these heavily on $partner’s API for $reasons
Him: Ok but why
Me: Intercompatibility etc other valid reasons
Him: Ok but do people LOVE using $partner’s API? How do we make this API lovable?
Me: …
Me: but an API is a tool? Either it does what you need it to do or it doesn’t?? It’s a screwdriver not a teddy bear.
Him: 🤔 I still think we should try to make it lovable.
…anyway I quit eventually
@swachter Then again, after having used APIs what were obviously both, developer-hostile and an obvious afterthought triggered by customer ultimatum, I'm actually pretty okay if an API could be called lovable.
@Seirdy 100% agreed.
One thing I always hated are those pretty "splash screens".
Just boot the darn program. *lol*
@Seirdy speak for yourself. I DO want an Experience.
The experience of opening a browser and browsing websites.
there's a quote, attributed to mark twain:
"experience. what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."
i'd say that covers this example perfectly.
Hear Hear!