A UI might not make it easier

A UI might not make it easier Posted on February 22, 2025 Building self-serve access to internal systems is generally a good idea. It would be silly to do engineering work to make a change when pressing buttons would do. The fact that it’s generally (and not universally) a good idea means that there are cases where it isn’t a good idea. The idea of making a task easier by making it self-serve, no code, in a UI shouldn’t be applied when the unavoidable complexity and nuance of the task to be done exceeds what a UI can reasonably handle. You probably have examples of a story like this: A company has a problem to solve. They build a system to solve that problem. It does a good job of solving that problem, though only for that variant of the problem. Time marches on and the system gets expanded to handle more variations of the problem. This expansion requires bespoke engineering work each time. Some systems grow to the point where the expansion becomes routine. The internals of that sys ... Read full article.