Killing Time

[andrewducker]

Putting off writing some code I've promised to write for my parents, fairly simple, but I can see that it's going to be making it nice to use that's the hard bit.

I _hate_ making things nice to use.  Once it's functional, the fun bit's over - I've made some part of the universe move in a way that does something that's useful.  I've bent it to my whim and shown that I was better than it was.  Making it look pretty is a job that's (a) never over and (b) incredibly fiddly.  I need to work with people that can deal with with aesthetics for me or they tend to just not happen.

Which is one of the reasons I'm _appalling_ at getting web pages done.  I know the basic syntax, but when you get right down to it it's all about _layout_, which is something I only care about up to a point.  That point being "It's readable."  I can happily debug other people's HTML code if I'm given a specific goal - "Can you make those tables line up" or "Why do the pictures keep moving about?" or something similar.  But faced with something that's just plain ugly I have _no idea_ what to do. 

It's not that I can't recognise the difference between prettiness and ugliness (well, ther's disagreement there, but I'm not going to argue about taste here), it's that I can't see a way from A to B - the fact that lightening the background colour, reducing the font size and dividing the layout into blocks will suddenly make it 300% more readable is just _beyond_ me.

For some reason this doesn't apply to text - I can copyedit until the cows come home.  I even find it fun.  I wonder if this is something I can learn, of if it's built in.

Comments

Re:

[andrewducker]

Commenting and tidying are two things I'm very happy to do. Largely because I got fed up with not being able to read my own code two weeks later.

Documentation I suck at. Well, not suck, but I'm not great at. But documentation can be written by other people. It needs to match the code, but ideall it'd be written _first_, and indeed that's what happens at my current job.

Re:

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Well, aesthetics is pretty much all I care about - teach me some HTML and Photoshop when Im back..

Re:

[chillies.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! When coding, there's a whole bunch of things one has to consider and trying to return to that mindset is hard. The obfuscated C contest is fun, but I'm not up to that kind of wizardry and think that the simpler the better. Succinct and well-documented code should be able to be read out loud (Geek Pride!) in much the same way that a mathematical formula is a continuous statement. If it sounds clunky and contorted, there's probably a better representation. And if it sounds good, it's easier to recall what the code does.

When you say the documentation is written first, do you mean end-user documentation or just the functional and technical specs?

Re:

[andrewducker]

end users?

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what that means.

(I'm involved in writing small chunks of a COBOL back end that will have a Java GUI written for it by people in a completely different department - presumably _they_ will write end-user documentation).

Re:

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I'm involved in writing small chunks of a COBOL back end that will have a Java GUI written for it by people in a completely different department...

Not to worry in this case, then -- the usability stuff (check out www.useit.com) is all about what the users will see.

In a perfect world, your company'll have tech writers to document the app for users.