Software Artisan

I have to say that both academia and corporations suffer from taking themselves too seriously. Sure there is a certain amount of propriety that you have to have with your clients, but people like having fun. They want to enjoy themselves. So why is it that science becomes such a fun-sucker? I mean you would think that having subjects like “funology” would be a great topic, but the scientific approach makes everyone stuffy. Then you visit the campus of MIT or something like that and people have robot powered couches and other cool stuff. Why? Because it’s fun!

If you play video games, you’ll invariably have to learn something before you really get into the game. The rules of fighting, how to get around, etc. Some games are better than others about teaching you what to do without making it feel like a classroom setting. Ok, press the ‘X’ button two times really fast… Thankfully the education levels are usually pretty quick. It’s a pity you can’t say “I already played the game, can’t I skip the class?”.

So what does this have to do with “serious” software? By serious I only mean that the software is supposed to do more than just amuse you. No matter how easy you make the software to use, there is invariably a learning curve. The fun aspect is learning what cool things you can do if you get into the app a little more. The reward is that you make your users look good. They get kudos from the people they work with, and you get a loyal customer. Whether you save them time or you give them power they wouldn’t have somewhere else. Does your application accept information automatically through an email address? What if the user wants to set up some things ahead of times like adding tags for a picture they upload, etc.?

If there is one thing that video games can teach us “serious” programmers (you can take yourself too seriously) is that if you properly reward your users for good actions, then they will keep doing it. Whether it was the intention or not, the Ruby on Rails framework teaches us how the writer of the application prefers to do web applications. The naming scheme for tables and the wiring of controllers, helpers, views, and models into one application all have their rewards. The fundamental reward for us developers is that if we do it the blessed way, we have less work to do with configuring and wiring things together. Even the code generators teach by example how to do things like how to do CRUD actions (the scaffolding feature). It now becomes fun to write web applications because we are rewarded for most things. Our imagination will help us overcome those obstacles that are beyond the basics we learned from the framework.

There is nothing that says we can’t use the same model for our applications. If our users learn how to use the app to make their lives better in simple, yet profound ways, they will want to become power users. If the users never get over the “I suck” threshold, even after examples and handholding, you will lose them. Making learning to be a fun activity doesn’t require a hippie teacher standing in front of a classroom with a guitar singing the times tables to the tune of “Gilligan’s Isle”. It just means that you make your users feel empowered, cool, or at the very least useful.