A message from developers to users
By
Dave Winer on Sunday, June 24, 2012 at 1:44 PM.
 On behalf of all developers I want to say something to all users.  We need you.
Without users, there can't be any software.
And the process of software, at some point, is driven by users.
The job of a developer is to seed the process.
To say, here -- I think this is a good idea.
Then it's up to the users to agree or not.
But it goes way beyond that.
Developers, when we do our most appreciated work, are paving cow paths. Making things we know people want work better.
So the process is:
1. Users do something.
2. Users do other things.
3. They do more of some things than others.
4. Patterns emerge.
5. You see which way to go.
6. You make that way easy.
I think all good developers know this, at a visceral level. But the longer we do this, the clearer it is.
There wasn't always a Mother's Day or a Father's Day. At some point we woke up and realized, hey, we need these people. And we appreciate them. So let's give them a day.
So we need to feel, imho, the same way for people who use our software.
I'm feeling this very clearly now, as the uptake begins for my latest works. The users' presence is being felt. They're showing me things I need to look at that I wasn't looking at before. The feedback loop is kicking in.
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