Ginger hates how frustrated I get with software. However, the above message is typical of the sort of experiences I have every day.
At least this error message made me smile. There was a bonus too. On re-pressing the button it, WordPress this time, did what it was supposed to do. That’s a much better record than most of the software I use.
I have two key requirements of software.
- When I press on a button it should go a do what I expect it to do – not necessarily what it was designed to do. Any self-respecting software engineer who doesn’t know what I want the software to do is obviously a total twit (that’s remarkably temperate language for me when referring to software engineers). If they actually used the software they develop they’d know that what I expect it to do is the right thing. Which leads me to point two.
- I expect the software engineer to have actually tried to use their software before they release it. Oh, hold on, if they actually did that, we’d probably not have any software. For example, what was the developer of the Facebook album editor thinking of? Try using the scroll bar on the edge of an image’s description field without accidentally dragging the image across the screen. Go on, try it. It’s next to downright impossible. As to actually editing text that’s at the bottom of the edit window. It’s almost impossible ‘cos most of the time when you put your cursor there, the stupid ‘where was this taken?’ dialogue pops up.
I could go on and on, but I’d probably burst a blood vessel and have a stroke. Instead I’ll go off and search the Internets for soothing images of sunsets and kittehs.