🔗 Frustrating Software

There’s software that Just Works, and then there’s Frustrating Software.

htop Just Works. LuaRocks is Frustrating Software. I wrote them both.

As a user and an author of Frustrating Software, there’s a very particular brand of frustration caused by its awkward workflows.

I recognize it as a user myself when using software by others, and unfortunately I recognize it in my users when they fail to use my software. I know the answer in both cases is “well, the workflow is awkward because reasons”. There’s always reasons, they’re always complicated.

I wonder if I would know that were I not a developer myself.

Well-intentioned awkward free software still beats slick ill-intentioned proprietary software any day of the week. Both cause frustration, but the nature of the frustration is so, so different. The latter pretends it Just Works, and the frustration is injected for nefarious reasons. The frustration in the former is an accidental emergent behavior. I feel empathy to that, but it’s no less frustrating.

I wonder if non-developer end-users feel the difference, or if the end result is just the same: “this doesn’t work”. I’ve seen people not realizing they were being manipulated by slick ill-intentioned software. I’ve seen people dismissing awkward well-intentioned software outright with “this is broken”.

If users were looking at a person performing a task in front of them (say, an office clerk) rather than a piece of code, everyone would be able to tell the difference instantly.

In the end, all we can do as authors of well-intentioned free software is to be aware when we ended up building Frustrating Software.

Don’t be mad at users when they don’t “get it” that it’s “because reasons”.

Don’t embrace the awkwardness retroactively as a design decision; just because it can explained and “that’s how it is” it doesn’t mean that “that’s how it should be” (and definitely don’t turn it into a “badge of honor” to tell apart the “initiated”).

Once we step back after the defensive kneejerk reaction when our work is criticized, it is not that hard to tell apart someone just trolling from genuine frustration from someone who really tried and failed to use your software. Instead of trying to explain their frustration away to those people, take that as valuable design feedback into trying to improve your project into something that Just Works.

As for me? LuaRocks has a long way to go (because reasons!), but we’ll get there.