Born to Serve
By Al Williams
It's common wisdom that perception is more important than reality. In other words, if users are satisfied, that is more important than actually meeting their needs. I have a slightly different opinion. I think expectations are the key to successful relationships with users, clients, and everyone else.
One way to deal with this is to try to meet everyone's expectations. A better way is to alter people's expectations so that they will like what you were already planning to give them. With a little practice it's easy to manipulate many situations by managing expectations.
This doesn't just apply to people, by the way. Many tomato gardeners use red Christmas ornaments to protect their crops from birds. How? While their tomatoes are still green, the gardeners hang red Christmas balls on the tomato plants. The local bird population will spy these ersatz tomatoes, swoop down, and waste a good bit of time pecking on the hard plastic ball. Eventually, they get frustrated and fly off, searching for something tastier. Later, when the real tomatoes ripen on the vine, the birds ignore them, because they expect them to be yet more hard plastic balls.
So how are your expectations coloring your programming and Web design? Think about it. This is a Java column, right? When you think of Java, what do you think of? Probably Java applets. Sure, you can write regular programs using Java, too, but everyone knows that most Java coders write applets for the Web.
Now, if I mentioned making dynamic Web content on the server, what would you think of? Probably CGI scripts using Perl.
