Programmers Are From Mars:
Users and Managers Are From Uranus

Jon “maddog” Hall

Linux International

Trademarks

Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds

Unix is a trademark of X/Open

SCO does not even own the trademark for Unixware

Micro$oft would like to own everything else

Agenda

The Programmer's View

The Vendor's View

The User's View

An Old Joke:
What the....

customer said

analyst heard

designer created

Programmer wrote

QA saw

Customer wanted

What Companies Want

Be Profitable

What Happens When Company Is Not Profitable?

Company goes out of business

Shareholders get peeved

CEOs are fired

Doors close

People are out of work

Taxes are lost

What Makes For a Profitable Company?

Making products or Services people what to buy

At costs lower than the competitors

Better quality than competitor

In volumes needed by customers

In timeframes needed by customers

Customer Satisfaction

Customer loyalty

What Makes For Good Products?

Dependable Timeframes/Roadmaps

Large volumes/Large margins (or both)

Customer demand

Product differentiation

Controlled Innovation

Upgrade paths

Mangement

Likes plans

Often does not understand technology

At one time they did

Growth of company forced CTO position

High growth causes less technologists

“PHB” has real meaning

Hall's Law #3047:

“It is easier to take an engineer and teach them business than to take a businessperson and teach them engineering.”

This Is Why:

Manager like reports

Managers like planning

Managers like timelines

Things That Go On In A Manager's Mind

Customer lock in, er, ah, loyalty

At first by necessity

Then by accident

Finally by stupidity

Patents are good

Keep engineers “fully utilized”

No training

No vacation, sickness, etc.

More Things

Lawyers make a lot of money....

...there must be a reason for that!

Finance people always say “No!”

Just read “Dilbert”!

Programmers

Programmers Are Too Intelligent

They think that everyone is just slightly less intelligent then they are

They want to be recognized

They want to “do it elegantly”

It is always “impossible”

But “impossible” means it will take a day and a quick “hack”

It is just a “one time hack”...

They will rewrite it next week...

Other Things In A Programmer's Mind...(not all, but some)..

Documentation people are a lesser evil

Quality control people are a lesser evil too...but they are not sure how

Manufacturing people drag their knuckles

Field test is to try out new features

The final product could look “quite different”

The Programmer's Mind

Patents are good (when they are yours)

Patents are bad (when they are someone else's...or in Free Software anytime)

Published papers are good...when someone else writes them for you

Likes to have the cutest acronymn for their project...

.....even if it does not make any sense

The Perceived End User

Born 1984

Basic at age 6

Linux at age 12

PHATLinux at 14

Ohio State for CE

Wants MBA

The Real End Customer

Not unintelligent

Do not read manuals

Do not want to know HOW the computer works

Just want to do their own work

The REAL End Customer

Has arthritis

Speaks only one language, and it is not yours

May be completely illiterate, but is not necessarily dumb

May be dumb

Barely understands how a lightbulb works

The REAL End User Customer...

“I was wondering why it was beeping at me for two days....”

Has trouble separating the concepts of operating system and anything else

Speaks in terms of the real world “knobs and widgets”

Two Types of End User Customers:

The corporate

Large installations with IT Staff

Small installations with visiting consultant

Very small installations with corner PC store

The Home user

Church

Community

Children

What Do They Want?

Simplicity

Even university presidents

Consistency

Do not give change for change's sake

Just Enough to do their job

Progressive Disclosure

Local support (and not under contract)

A few distractions on dreary days

Hmmm....

Xmms

Emacs

Vs

OpenOffice

Successful Projects

Real World Knobs

Supercalc

Palm Pilot

“Ayuh! Even I can use this thing!”

..but to use everything requires reading....

Simple, simple, simple

Tivo

Progressive disclosure

Hard parts automated

Successful Projects (Cont.)

WWW

Hypertext markup language

“What does that mean?”....

“Just click on it....”

The Search Engine...

.....and it all came together!

The name does mean a lot...but it has to be the right name.

Altavista

Google...its in the OED

I Would Like to Thank

Linux International

Linux International member companies

SGI for paying my salary and my airline ticket to this conference

IBM (for this really cool laptop)

Your community for its hospitality

Thanks to The Linux Community on behalf of:

The Bore hole Project in Africa (allows clean water for 7000 additional families)

Creation of low-cost community computers for India bringing Internet capabilities ($200 for a sharable computer)

The Royal Navy Air and Rescue Force (allows faster rescues)

The Genome project (allows easier sharing of data)

Faster Detection of Cancer (20 hours to 10 minutes)

For the hundreds of students at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji (to study and learn)

1600 doctors in Cuba who use it (to spread information)

Scientists at Fermilab looking for the smallest bit

Thank You

If you want to see the most important person in the Free Software Movement.....

.........look in the mirror.

Linus Says:

“The Linux philosophy is to laugh in the face of danger. Oops. Wrong one. 'Do it yourself.' That's it.”

Questions?

Trust the source, Luke!

Jon Hall

2002-08-23T19:01:31