Let’s Talk Programming – A Forgotten Benefit


Many will disagree with what I write, yet many will agree. This being true with everything in life is something we cannot avoid when living in a society driven primarily off of subjective measurements. One has to wonder is there truly anything objective anymore.

Starting with the basic difference programmers to users tend to have long forgotten, there are major differences between a website and an application. You have some websites attempting to run as an application where in my opinion the majority of those fall short in major ways. Website focus is on eye candy, presentation, drawing attention whereby everything screams at the user “look at me, look at me”. Major companies exist today only because they are exceptional getting people to look at them.

Behind websites are not only programmers, but marketing personnel, small user groups for input; then the whole science behind what makes people become compulsive at whatever they are selling. You see this every day on social media, colors, placement, interaction all designed by professionals who studied user interaction to find what keeps them interacting, addicted you might say to their product. Then wrap that up in a sales pitch making it sound like it is all for your benefit when suddenly you’re caught and don’t even realize how addicted you are to it.

It is marketing and designing the website that makes users blindly click “buy now” or “subscribe now” or whatever what they want you to do.

Long ago in a forgotten past is what we old timers know as applications. The user interface had only one objective, allowing you to quickly view and edit data in the manner it makes sense to you and your application. Nothing about them was eye candy, nothing about them screamed “look at me, look at me”. The only thing grabbing your attention was negative or positive reaction to the data you were looking at. Your ability to project changes in the data to get the desired result you need.

There was the day this distinction between a website and application was clear, very clear as in hard lines between what you were looking at. Today that line has been blurred greatly even by the frameworks used to create those applications. From Angular to Sencha and everything in between it is difficult to see the difference in look of an application and a website.

Each framework has positive and negative things to contend with. On each side you will find many who prefer one over the other. What I see is common in all of them with reference to the topic. They all have big headers, buttons and text; a look typical with a website and look at me design first principle. The small and clean header allowing more room for data presentation is long gone.

So when did your application become about eye candy, the look at me, look at me principle? Why did it become this?

We can talk about changes over time from how people access information, but that doesn’t change what is really hard line. Take my company AniMap LLC; my only product is AniMap, a historical county boundary changes program very heavy with maps and data. With a growing majority using phones to access information I’m often asked why I don’t make it phone accessible. Duh, how do you propose I show you historical changes of a county boundary and related data in a format that is usable on your phone without creating the need to switch between 3-4 different views whereby you could never see the data while viewing the map. This should be obvious to anyone. Or why would I want to take up massive amount of area with text, headers and a look at me appeal to reduce the area I have to actually present the data you’re looking for. AniMap is not a website, it is an application with an intended purpose. An invaluable product for those researching historically or genealogy.

We got here because another long forgotten principle is form follows function. Design patterns changed in an effort to keep users who seemed to demand the look at me design, a time where appearance of what they are looking at is more important than the data they a looking for. Then companies wonder why users complain the information they want is so hard to find.