As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren’t as familiar with it. It doesn’t happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do.
- I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask.
My favorite is “and there was some kind of error message.” There was? What did it say? Did it occur to you that an error message might help someone trying to diagnose your error?
I’ve had users who legitimately did not understand this question.
“What do you mean, what did it say? I clicked on it but it still didn’t work.”
Then you set up an appointment to remote in, ask them to show you what they tried to do, and when the error message appears, they instantly close it and say “See, it still doesn’t work. What do we even pay you for?”
I’ve had remote sessions where this was repeated multiple times, even after telling them specifically not to close the message. It’s an instinctive reflex.
Or it won’t happen when you’re watching, because then they’re thinking about what they’re doing and they don’t make the same unconscious mistake they did that brought up the error message. Then they get mad that “it never happens when you’re around. Why do you have to see the problem anyway? I described it to you.”
When that happens, I’m happy. Cause there is no error when the task is done right.
I mail them a quick step-by-step manual with what they just did while I watched.
When the error happens the next time I can tell them to RTFM and get back to me if that doesn’t solve the issue.