Making Software Fun
15 comments
·February 7, 2025userbinator
selcuka
True, but at the same time "enterprise software" vendors keep changing their UI icons instead of fixing real, decade old bugs (I'm looking at you, JetBrains). Apparently there is some value in adding such features.
zelphirkalt
Atlassian (broken Markdown parsers, incredibly sluggish/laggy UIs, update state issues on page without reload, and countless more)
Microsoft Windows (bugs relating to icons "down at the clock" and tooltips of those icons, sound volume management, start menu lag, stupid search in start menu, where when you type 3 letters it finds the thing you search, but when you type 4 letters it is no longer there, worse and worse system settings dialogs, hiding everything behind 3 more dialogs to click, and many more)
Salesforce Slack (buggy Markdown parser (what is it with these big companies always getting something like Markdown wrong???), laggy as hell, still no voice chat on FF, ...)
All of these big companies make dysfunctional software, that they can only push down our throats, because of uninformed management levels and the sheer size of marketing budgets they spent.
Lanolderen
I wanna hate it but I've done it. It's just tempting to go for the "this looks a bit wonky" or "add CSV import/export to X" ticket instead of the "weird bug, can't reproduce, here are some logs, reassigned 12 times in the past 3 years" ticket.
yarekt
Well where do you think all that tech debt that “we’ll pay off later” goes? new icons is the only thing they can ship quickly.
In their defence who wants to be the first PO to ship nothing for extended period of time. Long term always takes a back seat to short term, IMO in any company pressure must come from the very top
pplonski86
Agree. The software should be good and reliable. Then we can think about small and simple improvements like that.
I would say that software should be first smart, then it can be fun.
Nevermark
I once shipped a product whose app icon within the app disappeared if clicked, revealing a square “monitor” with a small version of Breakout you had better start playing with your left/right arrow keys because the game started upon appearance.
EDIT:
In a user's guide I introduced diagrams of calculations with points for scalar values, vertical bars for vectors, and then square 2-D grids to represent matrices, which I referred to as "waffles". With "waffle", referenced by page, in the index at the back of the guide.
I wondered if anyone would register the mild ridiculousness, but I had people coming up to me in conferences later laughing about matrix waffles.
stefs
ah, i once worked on a website and photoshopped one eye of a customer for a testimonial shut. then i switched the images out for a few ms on a random timer: i.e., die testimonal was winking at you. it was tiny and only happened once every few minutes but led to a lot of amusement in the dev team (you mostly saw some movement in the corner of your eye, took them ages to pinpoint it down). removed it before going live, tho.
trilbyglens
Pre-salesforce Slack is probably the most clear example of this in my mind. Still to this day, their API documentation is a lot of fun to read.
The Salesforce Behemoth Corporate Machine is slowly eroding the character of Slack, though, sadly.
selcuka
Their release notes [1] is still kind of fun.
smatija
I really appreciate this one from 4.18:
Certain menus were not being properly translated when switching languages in the app. You know what they say about menus — they’re most helpful when you can read them.
unfixed
Haha didn't know about this.
Honestly this is the tone that should have all release notes!
weikju
I miss fun software. Great read!
These sorts of "fun" things are only a good idea if your software is already good. Otherwise they'll just make your users hate your product even more ("what the hell did you spend your effort on!?")