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Discussion on: Which principles would your Hippocratic Oath for programming contain?

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Ben Halpern

I'd want this worded in the most communicative way possible, but something along the lines of:

Consider use cases of people in different circumstances than you....

This relates to accessibility, but in general is about having empathy for the whole ecosystem of possible end users... Like, anyone who could benefit from this software should be able to, and take the time to consider them.

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Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

Talk with your users?

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Ben Halpern

It can't be quite that simple because "talk to users" doesn't always scale or can't be the responsibility of everyone... More, like, "learn about users". Getting a sense, for example, of who might be bandwidth constrained vs who might never have to think about that. Talking to users could be part of the learning experience but isn't always achievable.

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Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

Right, it's one mean to an end. Maybe I can paraphrase Stephen Covey

=> Seek first to understand your users, then to be understood

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afritz

watching a blind noncoder use a built-in/free screen reader on a slow connection work at adding an MX record changed the way I code forever. It was the most painful user experience I have ever witnessed. 40 minutes into it the new record still had not been added and the NS had almost been wiped out twice - would have been if I had not been watching.