Of course, any AI smart enough to apocalypse us would also know about these.
When chatGPT first gained traction I imagined a future where I'm writing code using an agent, but spending most of my time trying to convince it that the code I want to write is indeed moral and not doing anything that's forbidden by it's creators.
not quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game).
for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."
they eventually caved and launched classic WoW to overwhelming success. some time later, in an interview, ion hazzikostas (the game director) and holly longdale (vice president & executive producer), admitted that they got WoW classic very wrong and that the people "really did know what they want".
anyways, point being that sometimes the person putting in the feature request knows exactly what they want and they have a good idea. while your default mode might be (and perhaps should be) to ignore feature requests, it is worth recognizing that you may be doing so at your own loss. after all, you might not not be able to fully understand every underlying problem of every user of your product -- but you might understand how to code the feature that they asked for.
Jagex thought they knew better than the players what the game should look like, and overhauled the whole game to the point it was unrecognizable. It took a massive loss of paying members to get them to finally release 2007 version of RuneScape back.
Even now, OSRS has double the amount of players that RS3 has. Lol
I think it's fair to say that Blizzard at a certain point went corporate and "lost the plot", so they thought they knew what people wanted, even though they really didn't (don't you guys have phones?).
sometimes users want something. that something might be a feature request, or it might be a feature removal. it doesnt really matter for the sake of my point(s):
a) ignoring your users requests can sometimes be a bad choice.
b) you might not necessarily understand every underlying problem that every user has. worse, you might think you understand the problem when you dont.
expanding on b: blizzard thought they understood their player base and the underlying problems of retail WoW. on multiple occasions, ion explicitly said stuff like "you think you want this, but you dont". they kept making changes to retail WoW to try and stop the hemorrhaging of players.
eventually they said "fuck it, we dont know why you want this, but here" (not a verbatim quote). it ended up being very profitable.
Classic WoW is also not as successful as OSRS, which is why they're exploring Classic+. Even OSRS, which was born on nostalgia, also gets significant new content updates (albeit polled).
It wasn't only a "we want WoW classic bug for bug," it was "the modern game has become so unrecognizable that it's basically WoW 2.0, you ruined it with the modern systems"
Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy.
Classic will only save them for so long without them making new content, but using classic's systems. So in a way, I think the point still stands, you have to understand what the underlying problem is. Users do generally know what they want, but they don't always know how to ask for it.
100% nope. Classic is what we wanted. All of what you just said is you saying: "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."
engineers love announcing that nobody but engineers knows what’s important in software; that’s complete and total bollocks. wow classic is a perfect example because it is exactly the sort of thing that the business unit and the engineers and the designers would not want to do. We don’t need to assume that because we have hundreds of Internet posts indicating exactly that. Not only did they not want to do it, but they argued that users didn’t know what they wanted for the sheer fact that making it was not something that was desired by either the business unit or the engineers.
Also, the point is not that classic saves them from making new content. It’s probably the case that the more content they make the more of a value proposition classic appears to be. Is there some new race in the new expansion that’s stupid? OK hop on over to classic.
Kill the part of your brain that makes you assume users are stupid.
In this case it was the producers (not the users) that were wrong in wanting to throw away something that already worked.
I believe his point isn't exactly about users not knowing what they want, but instead the tension between evolutionary design vs. "keep piling features".
Still, by volume, there are thousands of examples of bad ideas and feature requests on the wow forum too.
for sure!
that is why i made sure to include "while your default mode might be (and perhaps should be) to ignore feature requests" in my comment.
is to begin naming;
when names proliferate
it’s time to stop.
If you know when to stop
you’re in no danger."
Good software is made by individual people, nonprofits, or privately-owned entities.
Not getting paid is less good.
Which is great because it means whenever I can I should go with the underdogs and SMBs.
But also, most of the modern software is in what I call "eternal beta". The assumption that your users always have an internet connection creates a perverse incentive structure where "you can always ship an update", and in most cases there's one singular stream of updates so new features (that no one asked for btw) and bug fixes can't be decoupled. In case of web services like YouTube you don't get to choose the version you use at all.
For me, the turning point for Obsidian was their Canvas feature. That was a big move beyond the initial design of it being an excellent editor for a directory or markdown files that supported links and all the other cool things you can do with a basic directory of files and a few conventions. Nothing proprietary, nothing much beyond the directory of files aside from a preferences store. IMHO, Canvas and beyond should have been a new product.
If Obsidian was open source I would have been tempted to fork it at that point.
It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand.
Evernote and Dropbox were perfect in 2012. Adding more features just to chase new user growth often comes at the expense of confusing the existing user base. Not good
It is "their" distribution, to do with as they wish. If this would happen to your workstation, you are a fool, for not following release notes.
I already jumped distros for several reasons, marketing BS was one of them. I do not need latest scam or flag of the month!
theorchid•2h ago
ssaboum•2h ago
righthand•1h ago
pocksuppet•1h ago
thewebguyd•34m ago
Money printer go brrrr.
jayd16•19m ago
The generative part of the AI hype is getting in the way.
easton•1h ago
I skimmed the video and the presenters said "Oracle AI Database 26ai" multiple times without even a glint of self awareness on their face. They must've picked the only people on the team that could say that without laughing.