Lessons from making software about using software

Here's a great question that gets passed around on social media every so often: "What is obvious to everyone in your profession but unknown outside of it?" Programmers can answer a closely related question: "How does making software change how you use software?" Here's a partial answer: I read all error messages as: "Something is wrong. Doing something different might help, or maybe there is nothing to be done." Error handling is very, very hard (the incomparable Dan Luu has written about this here and here).1 If I read your error messages as accurate and meaningful, you have earned a lot of trust with me. There are many features I don't trust. It's hard to say exactly which ones, because this relies on complicated intuitions about (e.g.) which ones are hardest to get right or most likely to be rushed into production. But I am keenly aware that just because it's in production, that doesn't mean it works. And it definitely doesn't mean that it does what the banner headline or the name…