Once upon a time, my girlfriend started using Instagram. She asked me to register and subscribe to her. I tried it - it didn't work out because it was impossible to register on Instagram from the desktop. Then I thought - what a strange people. What kind of fool would make a software product that cannot be used from a computer? They will fail, and this Instagram will become a marginal service for a bunch of strange women who for some reason do not like desktops.
It took only a few years, the market put everything in its place - and the biggest fool was me. And the geniuses from Instagram predicted how and where everything would develop. Today, most of the products for users are made primarily for mobile platforms. At best, they figure a universal web that is still optimized for mobile phones. Because users love iPhones, not computers. The business sat down, counted, and made a decision - let's make more money, let's have a mobile first everywhere.
I myself have recently overwritten the business that we are going to do a mobile first - because I am a senior developer, and I can make the right decisions for business. If a person today wants to make a mass product, relying on the desktop version, he is almost guaranteed to fail.
But everything that is done in IT is done by programmers, each of whom is a PC user. The desktop has become a niche tool for professionals, and at first I liked the idea. I love to feel my technical and intellectual superiority. In the end, we are the ones who design the world of mobile interfaces while sitting at our computers, we decide everything ourselves, and we keep everything under control.
But now it starts to seem to me that we are overplaying.
One day I was not at home, and the team lead asked me to do a code review. I answered - so and so, bro, I'm on the phone, the review will not work. "Well, look from the phone." Stop. Stop. I will not look at the code from the phone - it's some kind of game. The work on the code is very simple - it is done at the computer, and it is highly desirable in the IDE. Skimming through the changes in 50 files on the phone is not a code review, but hack. Lead said ok, but I realized that for him a telephone review is a routine.
A friend of mine, with whom we are cutting a pet project, told me that I do not use the I prefix in interfaces. I said - wait, but this is a relic of the past - a time when the IDE did not know how to highlight them. Now he can, the prefix flies to the dustbin of history. Yes, but he often looks at the code from the phone, and he does not understand where the interface is, and where the class is. The friend's convenience is an important thing, I returned the prefix to the rider's config, and forgot to think about it. But now I remembered, and began to understand - it looks like I will have to write the code so that it is also convenient on the smart screen. What? WHAT!?!
Call me a dinosaur, but it pisses me off. I myself - I hate phones. I don't understand why I would need to open Jira on my phone if I fucking work at a computer. And Jira on the phone is better done than on the desktop. Because project managers do not do the real work, they sit on a bench in the park and move tickets on a beautiful iPhone. Developers who are forced to use this jira suffer from a terrible desktop version.
I have an iPhone that does two things. Calls and messages that I am not at the computer now and cannot answer. But this is what I want. And the market said that I am no longer a person without a phone, and even the github should only enter when I enter the code from the message to the phone. Corporations trust my phone 100% and I have no mechanism to make them trust my computer the same way. No one.
I am faced with the problem that I cannot manage my banking affairs if I forgot my phone somewhere. I mean, what the hell? I am sitting at my computer, authorized and valid, but I need a phone to access my personal account in the bank. In the web version - which is usually also less functional than the mobile application. And there is no desktop application. How is this possible? How do they imagine it? Here is such an accountant sitting in an office, not at a computer, but with a phone in her hands - and managing the company's assets in a mobile client of Sberbank?
Modern life literally imposes a smartphone on you, and that's only half the trouble. I feel like my desktop experience is under increasing threat.
In a world where every product is made for mobile phones, all products will have only those functions that will be convenient on mobile phones. On a small screen, you won't be able to make a complex multifunctional shape - that means there won't be any more complex shapes. Yes, we have a desktop version, but we will not make features that will only work on it - this contradicts the ideas of the user experience. Therefore, if now you come up with something complicated enough, your products will explain to you that you have to simplify everything. You won't be able to do this on a phone. And yet - the funny thing is - we have incredibly powerful phones. A lot of memory, top-end multi-core processors - what for? It's simple. As a result, it turns out that since most people do not want to use complex, but cool software, it means that there will simply not be complex and cool software. For nobody.
I am killed by the thought that I could solve all my problems in general, sitting at the laptop, but the business and the market decided that it was not profitable. And now my computer is just a marginal accessory for my phone. I still can't fucking get used to the idea that geeks are no longer engineers who whip in iron. Now geeks are just super-consumers, and “testing a device” is now to check whether its glass is breaking on the asphalt.
I have always believed that the coolest development company in the world is Microsoft. And when Mikey released the next OS optimized for tablets, I believed them and bought a tablet with Windows 8. I honestly tried to use it, got disappointed, bought a keyboard with a mouse for it, and turned it into a laptop. Then Microsoft failed, but these things are now called “ahead of the time,” and I think that a second attempt to transfer desktops to mobile first software is not far off.
I am not an old mumbling grandfather who cannot accept that everything is changing. Because I'm damn right. It is better to work with complex and multifunctional software from the desktop. I have a hundred keys here, two healthy monics, a mouse, a joystick and even a stupid touch. This is fucking the most advanced and modern tool for working with programs. And everyone pretended that computers and complex programs are outdated shit, and the future belongs to stupid applications on the floor of the screen.
And the worst thing is that every day I have to come to work, and build there a different world in which I would like to live - and I can not do anything about it. I, and everyone else developed, have to hammer nails into the coffin lid of the tool we love every day.
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