A/B testing gets misused to juice metrics in the short term

Re:A/B testing gets misused to juice metrics in the short term by zanecodes on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @04:45PM (#32075437)

In the same way that we try to use semantic versioning to prevent unintended breakages in dependents of our public-facing APIs, I think we developers should start considering the UI/UX of our apps to be their public-facing API, and use the philosophy of semantic versioning accordingly.

When we rename or remove a function from an API, that's a breaking change, any dependent software will no longer work unless it's modified to take that change into account.

Similarly, when we move, rename, or remove a UI element, keyboard shortcut, or visual affordance, that should be considered a "breaking change" for our dependents, the humans on the other side of the screen. And in the same way, we should avoid making such changes unless the long-term benefit of doing so outweighs the short-term cost. Plus, users will know that moving from 7.x.x of your software to 8.x.x will require them to relearn some aspect of it.

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Re:A/B testing gets misused to juice metrics in the short term by account42 on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @05:51AM (#32080628)

We should also keep arround long-term support releases of older versions of user-facing applications so that people can update at their own convenience and not at a point determined by some release manager. With server software and libraries no one expects everyone to upgrade immediately to new major versions but somehow this is an acceptable expectation from end users.

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