This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
One of the common tropes I sometimes hear web developers share when talking about our work is something to the effect of…
I’m not a doctor. No one is going to die if I make a mistake.
But that’s not always true. Sometimes our work literally is life or death.
A few weeks ago, my friend Eric Bailey wrote about his experience with a mental health website. Eric was trying to access the site, but encountered a loading spinner that wouldn’t go away…
If you are familiar with how the web is built, what happened is pretty obvious: A website that over-relies on JavaScript to power its experience had its logic collide with one or more other errant pieces of logic that it summons. This created a deadlock.
This is a direct by-product of modern web development, and our over-reliance on JavaScript, large libraries, and mountains of third-party scripts.
And for a mental health website, a mistake made by a web developer can literally be a matter of life or death.
I also need to point out that people are visiting sites like this because they are not in a good place. Depression and stress lowers your executive function. Furthermore, people internalize technology’s failures as their own.
What if I was suicidal? …
A person seeking help in a time of crisis does not care about TypeScript, tree shaking, hot module replacement, A/B tests, burndown charts, NPS, OKRs, KPIs, or other startup jargon. Developer experience does not count for shit if the person using the thing they built can’t actually get what they need.
I highly recommend that you go read Eric’s entire article.
And your organization builds bloated, over-engineered software, share it with them, and encourage them to stop. Build with HTML first. Under-engineer. Build things that work, even when parts of it break.
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This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Go Make Things | Sciencx (2023-02-13T14:30:00+00:00) Web development can literally kill people. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2023/02/13/web-development-can-literally-kill-people/
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