John Kellar's Blog: What do you see?

Sunday, September 21, 2008

What do you see?

I just saw a new Mercedes commercial that was outlining some of the their latest safety features. One that jumped out at me was the fact that when the car is about to be in an accident the windows will be rolled up automatically in anticipation of the impact. They do this through several sensors monitoring many variables. Looking on their website they call the feature PRE-SAFE and it can even close the sunroof if you are in a skid and the sensors detect the car could roll. I don't drive a Mercedes, but the technology driving something like that is very impressive. What really caught my attention was when the announcer closed the commercial by saying something like "the features we hope you never see".
Software developers are very quick to use tools that offer them the ability to save time, write less code or just do cool stuff. They are also very quick to complain when a tool is missing even the slightest feature that they want. Take a moment and think about how many times you have used an application and never thought about the work that went into building it. Someone was building in safeguards for you that you never realized existed, but when you run into a problem you benefit from their efforts.
I have developed quite a few applications and did my best to anticipate what a user would need in a variety of situations. How could I make the application handle it more smoothly for the user. What I never considered, is that someone else is out there doing the same thing for ME. Well to everyone who has written and application I use to make my job easier, THANKS!

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