on the usability of editable software

Thoughts on how to write software so that it can be edited and changed more easily at the code level.

https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/on-the-usability-of-editable-software

• What if we made software with the expectation that end users would make at least a few changes?

• the difficulty of adding new features or modifying existing ones grows very quickly, much faster than linearly, with the total number of features.

• The more users we try to appease out of the box, the harder things become for those we haven’t served yet.

• Consider merging back not user submitted features, but the refactorings that make those features possible.

• I think it’s at least worth experimenting to see if we can help more users by letting them help themselves.