Here’s an experiment: Choose a piece of software you use a lot. Go to the discussion forums for that software and suggest a completely pointless, work-making change.

Something along these lines: “I like Firefox, but you should have to always enter ‘https://’ before any web addresses you type in.”

Or: “The problem with Photoshop is that it doesn’t ask if you want to resize your image every time you open one.”

Or maybe: “Twitter should require e-mail confirmation every time you post.”

You will be excoriated, as is right and just. Nobody wants to press an extra button, select an extra parameter or switch windows just to use the software the way it was intended. Only a madman — and not in the cool, nicotine-addicted, alcoholic advertising-exec way — would suggest that the way to improve software is to add busywork.

So, why is there a vast legion of networked curmudgeons who complain every time someone suggests an improvement to software? Not all “improvements” are actual improvements — as angry users of Final Cut Pro X can attests — but this is something different. There are people out there who apparently hate convenience.

An example. Long ago, I reviewed a terrible, terrible game called The Matrix Online. It was soul-pummeling in every way, but there was one aspect in particular that bothered me. I’ll quote myself:

The interface requires you to double-click to open the elevator, double-click to pull up the floor buttons, click to choose a floor, then double-click again to open the elevator door from the inside. That’s right, The Matrix Online manages to make elevators in the game work more poorly than they do in real life.

What possible defense could someone have for this insult to user interface design? The standard defense of the convenience-hater, of course: “What, it’s too much work to click a couple extra times? Are you so lazy that you can’t even click?”

If you suggested that they should add more clicks to the exciting, thrill-packed experience of changing floors, even Mr. Hater would protest. So, why is he being such a microphallus over subtracting a click or two?

Because he’s lazy, that’s why.

Like a pastor preaching on the evils of adultery while his mistress kneels behind the pulpit and undoes his trousers, those who accuse others of laziness for wanting a better UI are covering for their own flaws.

There are two types of lazy people in the world: those who don’t want to do anything they don’t have to and those who don’t want to learn anything they don’t have to.

Here’s the thing: There are two types of lazy people in the world — those who don’t want to do anything they don’t have to and those who don’t want to learn anything they don’t have to.

The former group drives progress. The latter impedes it.

The former group includes some of our prehistoric ancestors who said, “Why should I have to get up close to a bison to kill it?” and invented the atlatl. The latter group includes a bunch of jerks who decided to let everyone else kill the bison rather than learn this newfangled atlatl device, and then chowed down on bison haunch while calling everyone else a lazy sod.

The don’t-do-it group is the impetus for every invention, from the light bulb to computer-assisted robotic surgery. The don’t-learn-it group would just as soon we were still depending on tallow for our lighting needs (“What, lighting a candle is too much work for you?”) and dying in surgery more often (“What, you need a machine to help you operate on someone? You can’t even be bothered to hold a knife?”).

Figuring out how to avoid busywork is a healthy and uniquely human impulse. Insisting that everyone else perform busywork so you don’t have to be bothered to use the brain that millions of years of hardscrabble evolution gave you — that’s just detestable.

Image: Frits Ahlefeldt, HikingArtist.com
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Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to give proper credit to canonized coder Larry Wall for his groundbreaking views on the virtues of laziness.