Step by Step Instructions
Programmers are good at writing step by step instructions. After all, that’s all a computer program ever is – a set of very simple step by step instructions. Of course, modern programming languages try and make it more complicated, by adding objects and events, but in the end, everything comes down to a set of instructions.
That said – you should never ask a programmer to give you a step by step guide. He’s used to dealing with very literal devices, so the odds are that a step by step guide to making a cup of tea would take a week to complete, and fill 3 narrow spaced pages of A4. Of course, that’s a stereotype – a bad programmer would get it short and wrong (take cup, add tea), and a really good programmer would recognise the actual needs of the situation, and get it right.
Still, in general, we’re good at the step by step instructions thing. We’re also good at following said instructions; okay, sometimes we’re arrogant and think we know better, and can skip a step, but generally, put a programmer in front of a set of instructions, and we’ll follow it accurately and to the letter.
The trouble is, that’s what we assume everyone else will do too, so that’s how we write our instructions. Real people have a strange (to programmers) tendency to wander off from the written guide, and try to do their own thing.
Programmers don’t expect this, so we don’t guard against it. For example, I had this conversation at work today:
Me: So what did you do next?
User: I closed the window.
Me (thinking something is up): How did you do that?
User: I clicked the X in the corner
Me: Why did you do that? The instructions say “Click Accept”
User: Oh, but clicking the X is faster… it takes a couple of seconds when you click “Accept”
Me: Sigh… yes… that’s the program running to do the work you asked for… Clicking “X” cancels it.
User: Oh, well why didn’t the instructions say that?
In the end I changed the program, so clicking the “X” did the same thing as clicking “Accept”… and no amount of arguing will convince either the user that the instructions were right, or me that they were wrong.
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