14 princibles of polite programming
The article discusses how people will like your program more if it’s polite. Not just that it says “Please” “Thank you” and “Sorry”, but that it actually predicts what you want next, tells you want it’s doing, and will generally be /nice/.
It’s something we don’t see enough of, really. There are few examples of actually helpful programs out there (The first version of Afphrid was praised for it’s helpfullness. Not sure about this version, nobody’s mentioned it), a good example would be Sam & Mark‘s RSS Validator, which tells you clearly what’s wrong and where to fix it. If any program or software I write can be described as both Useful and Friendly, I’ll be happy.
I’ll be even happier if it’s described as Bug Free 🙂