Re: Seven words for seven words

[Joe Malin <jmalin -at- jmalin -dot- com>]

How about "tech support hates developers who think this"

Hey, it happens. Without saying that it's true or not, just remind a 
developer that he's not the only person in the organization. Having been 
a support rep (and a user), I wish that the documentation told people 
obvious stuff. That way, I wouldn't have had to say the same thing 
/thousands/ (literally) of times, nor would I have had to deal with 
irate customers.

I worked as a support rep in a company that built sound card/CD-ROM 
drive combinations for end customer installation, back in the days 
before it all came with your computer. That was 14 years ago; even 
/today/ people are nervous about computers. Can you imagine my typical 
customer back /then/?

At first, the documentation was terrible, incomplete, and often just 
plain wrong. The CEO (who IMHO was clinically insane) ordered the 
managers to send out products built out of whatever was in the warehouse 
or whatever he could get for a deal. For one such combo, plugging in the 
cable backwards (from the CD-ROM drive to the card) destroyed the card. 
I will let you guess if the card and/or the cable were designed to 
prevent this, or if the documentation said anything about it.

The documentation was hard to read, and the installation software 
assumed you knew everything about your computer's innards, including 
what DMA and IRQ were being used. Even /today/, most casual users don't 
know that, and only the grace of Microsoft saves them. I spent day after 
day leading people through the exact same problem. We had wait times in 
the order of hours, even though we were open 7 AM to 8 PM Pacific time 7 
days a week.

Eventually we got a new CEO, new software, and new docs. The software 
automatically installed everything with a success rate we measured at 
/over/ 99%. The docs started with a big READ THIS FIRST card that you 
had to pull out of the box before you could get to anything else. 
Everyone was overjoyed; alas, it came too late and the company went 
bankrupt.

Does your developer /want to get paid/? Does your developer /want a 
raise/? Docs affect the bottom line.

Or ask your developer if he ever uses open-source software. What's his 
greatest frustration? If he doesn't say "lack of information" he's lying.

Dan Goldstein wrote: