Power users haven't become lazy. The middle ground for power users has disappeared. Now it's a split between "everything is so dumbed down and hidden behind fifteen layers of clicks" and "setting up and caring for your system is a second job in addition to your regular job".

Dev tools in every browser is a 1 level menu in the main hamburger menu deep or available via 2 possible KB shortcuts (at least in Windows).

That assumes you're in a browser context.

I think overall the complaint is every type of experience. Including native apps. You can't simply dev tools inside of a native app. Even with Charles proxy or something you'd be grasping at straws trying to figure out what may be the actual issue (and at that point you probably can't work around it anyway)

Sometimes when I put my power user hat on I find myself thinking that the software I'm currently using is not meant for power users and instead I need to look for the alternatives. Now it's not just a few clicks away but I need to install some new type of software.

So the options for power users are still here, but they just aren't front and center as they used to as you said. This reminds me a little bit of the discussion around the iphone not being customizable and the response being that you have the option to just get an android phone instead.

At some point in the spectrum here one must become lazy when they can't be bothered to click on a few things or find an alternate product, and you become entitled when you demand power user features to become front and center when the vast majority won't ever need to use the features.

I've always had the opinion that it's possible to have a middle ground. User friendly defaults, the ability to dig deeper and the ability to make advanced features more readily accessible. It's not easy though, picking one or the other is definitely a lot easier.

On the flip side, how difficult is it to open dev tools, flip to the network tab, and look at your status code return(s) as a power user? As a power user, it never struck me as a high vertical.

The problem is, now I have to do this every time for shitty dumbed down apps.

Prime example: Twitter always responds "oops, something went wrong" even if the backend returns `{ error: "Video aspect ration is not allowed. Try 16:9" }`

Those "oopsie-doopsie, website made a poopsie" infantilizing error messages are just awful. Tell the user 1. specifically what went wrong, 2. what, if anything, they can do to correct, and 3. a token (like an error message) that could be useful for tech support or reporting a bug.

People's heads aren't going to explode if you treat them like functioning adults.

You’ve just vastly overestimated the technical capabilities of most Twitter users.

The meta conversation here is whether there was a decision to NOT give the user information on how to correct the problem - or if it was a process maturity, developer skill, or limited resources that caused the development to focus on the "happy path" only.

Dev tools of a browser are not what a power user focused browser would need. Think more about being able change keyboard shortcuts. Being able to execute small custom scripts that do stuff with tabs, windows, and pages. Yes I know browser plugins and bookmarklets exist.

But why do bookmarklets run with the security context of the currently opened page? I have one self-written bookmarklet to capture the page title and url into emacs for storing it there. Firefox asks me every time I click on that bookmarklet on a new origin (domain, protocol tuple) whether I want to allow that. With no option to avoid that. I have written this piece of code myself I want to use it to enhance my workflow. There is no need to treat it like any javascript hosted on a CDN, or on a Facebook server.

Why? Because a lot of regular people were tricked into running malicious bookmarklets.

So could we maybe have them not get any privileges by default, but still work?

No privileges by default is often at odds with the goal of having something work, at least out of the box.

For me personally, it's quite difficult.

My day job is C++ app and driver code for rather complex systems yet when I open browser dev tools my eyes glaze over. There is plenty of middle ground of people who are technical but are not web or browser developers.

I’m not a web or browser developer, the vertical isn’t quite as high as “you need to be working in the web space to understand it.”

There’s a lot to look at in there, but there’s some usual suspects tabs that people look at the majority of the time they have dev tools open. And conversely some tabs that you probably only use in the web dev scene. I’d highly recommend perusing the network and storage tabs, for things like status codes and cookies, respectively. As I mentioned, the vertical is nowhere near as high as you’re saying, you’ll figure it out if you look at it more.