You've been there. I know you have. Where you find an app that you truly enjoy working with.
It's more than simply doing the work.
And you try to rationalize it. I like it because of this reason, or that reason.
You might start playing with it at home, but introduce everyone at work to it.
Because you can't help but want it to be there during your peak productive time.
It's less like a workflow, and more of a very specific experience that you get nowhere else.
And it's hard to quantify in a way that can be replicated.
What's interesting is that nobody seems to understand yet how to make humans do that intentionally. Some of the biggest and most powerful software companies on earth have created that sensation in their users, without realizing that was what they were doing, and then threw it away in later versions.
Adobe comes to mind.
But none of them get it.
I think there's an entire artform here. Something that's been sitting staring us in the face for 50 years, that we've never stopped to study, or think about as engineers.
It's right there.
Even as you're reading this, you can remember at least one instance of an app or a game that in some small way, made you fall in love a little.
What experience are you thinking of?
Do you remember what it was that did it for you?