MSB was recently assigned a task without complete specifications. And definitely without a UI. There were assumptions he ended up filling in.
Now this particular individual is a case study in being unopinionated. In not taking a stance. In asking a question where a statement would suffice instead. That’s how he is in life.
“Hey, do you want to sit here or there?” “What do you want to order?”
Unfortunately I’m not able to capture the sheer frustrating nature of his questions. The reaction, often, is “why is this even a question?” or “just pick a side man”.
I do sometimes wonder where it comes from. Is it deference? Humility? Fear of pulling the trigger? A timidity that forces him to stay out of harm’s way? It’s frustrating and ridiculous, whatever it is.
Back to that task he was supposed to deliver. I have never seen something with so. many. configurations. The UI only exists as a layer above the low level abstraction. A thin facade. Almost everything that’s under the hood has been exposed as a configuration parameter. And in a horrible way no less.
It’s like you walk into a restaurant and order a pasta. There are usual questions - Red/white/pink? Veggies/meat/anything else? Shape of the pasta? Special instructions?
Imagine you were instead asked - whole wheat or maida? How long do you want your tagliatelle to be? Cow cheese or buffalo cheese? How much salt should I add to your pasta dough?
Like fuck off already.
There’s some merit here in considering this spectrum. On one end you have people building products for hackers. Unopinionated, infinitely configurable, easy to configure. Almost a DIY kit. On the other hand, you have clean, finished, opinionated products that just work.
There are merits to each. There are different audiences for each. And it’s very, very possible to get either of these very, very wrong.