Keep it simple, because we are stupid
Simplicity, has it's advantage. As Einstein said , in effect, "that everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler." But, the fancy stuff catches up easily. It catches up with everything and everywhere, thus, what can be done with simple steps, are being done now with enterprisification. But it does not end there. These sort of stuff - which are done in source code called Obfuscation, for more related stuff see the C challenges. In between the common enterprise code is fighting a very hard fight against those found in real challenge for obfuscated code, as of now, the enterprises are winning the complexity battle by being more complex than an obfuscated code.
Unfortunately, one would have liked that UI is kept out of this. I mean, seriously, it is a bunch of HTML with CSS and none has to write anything on JavaScript because whatever you can think you want to do, there are multitudes of libraries based on jQuery. For Hari Seldons sake, they let you process images using JavaScript now. Oh... the blasphemy.
But... it is Einstein who also said : "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." So, given nice fool proof tools to a set of fools, they would invariably use the tool to increase their folly. Thus, the whole new bunch of idea - known as responsive UI (RUI) came. Do not get me wrong, RUI is a brilliant idea, just like Agile. But just like agile, RUI is misunderstood, misplaced, and mistreated.
The latest to join the epic fall is, the proverbial Gmail. Observe that the basic sanity of Login page test cases mandates that there should be no way to know if a login exists or not in a server. BUT, Google obviously transcended that idea. Two text boxes, login and password would have sufficed. But, this is the RUI, there has to be buttons sliding, pages moving in and out, even if there would be 2 text boxes, RUI needs complexity to solve! Here, Google bestowed us with a nice complex login page, where it was earlier the epitome of simplicity, now there is RUI, which makes the login page vulnerable to attacks which finds out what are the logins of all users in gmail. It says,
- Sorry google does not recognise the email : in case of wrong login
- Sorry, the password is not matching in case of wrong password
It breaks the standard or rather any non standard notions on sanity, but, the goal, the goal is achieved, they have RUI, which had no place to be in there. There was seriously no need for RUI. Google RUIned it, actually.
By that, I just found out there is a google login, *foo.bar* , brace yourself :
Ideally, this page should not even be there. It fails on so many levels. Now I also know that what Erik's possible e-mail is, or may be someone with the same name.
Who designed it? Who tested it? Who let it go? Why no one actually complained about it then and not doing it even now? What is really happening out here? This is one of the epic fails as it goes, however I am sure that people would explain it with various *awesome reasons* - none of them would be ... logically valid enough because of the axioms taken were, unrealistic.
Anyone cares for simplicity anymore? Einstein is long dead, and in any case, he never practiced software. Us, the software people are smarter, for sure. If we are not, we would probably want to KISS these problems goodbye.