Frontend Requirements: "Well it needs to be more user-friendly, and have this rockstar wow effect" - Yea wtf are you even talking about? You want me to add random glitter explosions, because I found a script for that, that's pretty 'wow effect' right?

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 81 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Real back-end requirements: when x, y goes in (in JSON-as-an-XML-CDATA-block because historical reasons), I want you to output x+y+z+æ+the proof to P=NP.

æ will require you yo compile x+y in CSV, email it to Jenny, who will email back the answer. She doesn't quite know how to export excel sheets though so you'd better build a robust validator. No, we don't know what æ is supposed to look like, Rob from Frontend knows but he's on vacation for the next 8 months.

The request must be processed under 100 ms as the frontend team won't be able to prioritize asynchronous loading for another 10 sprints and we don't want the webpage to freeze.

And why does your API return a 400 when I send a picture of my feet? Please fix urgently, these errors are polluting my monitoring dashboard and we have KPIs on monitoring alerts.

[–] soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz 22 points 8 months ago

Clearly fake. No task ever includes anything but the happy path. Loading or failure states are a myth

[–] evatronic@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago

output x+y+z+æ+the proof to P=NP.

I'm sure there's an npm module for that.

[–] RonSijm@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yea, fair enough. My point was mostly: backend requirements are usually at least objective. "Json xml comes in", "CSV goes out by email", "The request must be processed under 100 ms", "API should not return 400 on feetpics" - these are still mostly objective requirements.

Frontend requirements can be very subjective "The user should have a great user experience with the frontend"

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hahaha that's what frontend devs think, but the backend requirements are just as vague: "Just make this button work". In my example all the requirements would actually be figured out bit by bit over months, nevermind the prescience required to foresee future architecture-breaking features or scaling requirements. At least you can make a mockup and get instant feedback, flawed as it is.

On either side it takes experienced engineers to suss out actual requirements from customers/PMs. The main difference is that the backend (especially on the infra/devops side) is only accountable to itself if everything goes well, but ironically that means no-one knows or cares about the amount of engineering that goes into keeping PMs blissfully ignorant of the risks and complexity.

[–] RonSijm@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Hahaha that’s what frontend devs think

Hahah, well as a primarily backend developer, that's what I think as well.

“Just make this button work”

If that button doesn't work, that sounds like a frontend problem to me.. ;)

But yea, as you mentioned, it probably comes down to experience. As the meme from this post depicts. When I dabble in frontend and make a WinForm for my devtool, people just look at me and are like "Uhhh, can you make it better?"

No sir, clearly I can not. And I have no idea what you mean with "better".

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

twitches

This is fine.

I am fine with this.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 35 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Actually the front end stuff is more like "we need to make the 'sign in' button bigger. No one can click it because it's tiny, and it's in German."

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I spent years as a mobile developer and the thing that always drove me the most nuts was being handed a software design with lots of tiny buttons that were nearly impossible to tap with a finger. I generally implemented the UI by increasing the size of the tappable regions (without increasing the apparent size of the buttons) making it actually usable, but one time the designer discovered that I was doing this and went apeshit and convinced the project manager to order me to undo all this and make the tappable regions the same size as the buttons. The grounds for this was that implementing the larger tappable regions would take too much extra time - despite the fact that this had already been done and it took additional time to undo it.

[–] kurwa@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

So wait you actually had to undo it all? What kind of designer would make mobile buttons small?

[–] sheogorath@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I usually just do what they requested and when they come to complain I just tell them "well, you're the one who requested this" and pull up receipts. My DM to myself on Slack is filled with screenshots and links to confirmations for bullshit requests that the product team made.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

My DM to myself on Slack is filled with screenshots and links to confirmations for bullshit requests that the product team made.

How good does it feel when you pull out those screenshots to say, 'no u'?

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

What kind of designer would make mobile buttons small?

Have you ever used a mobile app? Every commercial mobile app I've ever used has tons of tiny fucking buttons.

[–] dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Someone who has tiny fingers

[–] docAvid@midwest.social 3 points 8 months ago

Fucking apeshit craze-balls, makes sense, business as usual.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Marketing want us to add more typos to make the site feel more “friendly”.

[–] veroxii@aussie.zone 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

As a SaaS founder I'm now wondering if this actually works. Will have to talk to the front-end devs on Monday.

[–] OKRainbowKid@feddit.de 1 points 8 months ago

Please don't

[–] Cwilliams@beehaw.org 1 points 8 months ago

Plese donot

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Isn’t our main audience German? If you wanted non German stuff you shoulda asked for regional translations. Not only is that a change request, but you’re gonna be pushing the release window by months.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But it doesn't even say "Sign in" in German. It says "Das Bootton" because someone thought it would be funny and never changed it.

[–] Darrell_Winfield@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

That someone was RIGHT!

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Man, if only backend demands were algebraically tractable. Often they're related to frontend demands that may or may not make backend sense, since the frontend is all users see.

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Yeah that’s not a real back end

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Yeah if you have shitty UX people frontend will just built what they’re told. Or actually more often, you could have really talented UX people and management decisions are like “needs more buy now buttons, the 3 visible on the screen aren’t enough.” Shit flows downhill

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

6 E Q U J 5 wow!