Re: Great SWT Program

In article <1191451241.666516.257410@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<bbound@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 3, 11:18 am, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think there are two questions here:

(*) One is why/whether should people who already know text-mode
tools should switch to something with a GUI. IMO, the most
compelling reason for switching is that the GUI offers features not
available with the text-mode tool -- not "not readily learnable
by novices", but "not available", or "not available without
significant additional learning". Whether the text-mode tool is
novice-friendly isn't important for these people, except as it
affects whether there will continue to be a user base for the tool.

This explains sticking with tools learned before the invention of the
GUI, but not learning similar tools later,

Well, except that if you know one such tool, the next is easier to
pick up than one that uses a different UI paradigm.

nor the active
*development* of such tools since that date.

The snob appeal of knowing something most people don't, and a
reluctance to discard tools one has spent a lot of time mastering,
are factors, if not very admirable ones.

And the snob factor explains everything, including the
above...interesting. :)

Not really. The time investment in some cases goes back to before
the prevalence of GUIs.

One reason to switch to the GUI equivalent is simple enough: you'll be
speaking the same language, as it were, as 99% of the computer-using
population

I'll admit that this has advantage.

so you won't be baffled by mentions of e.g. charmap.

I wouldn't say I was baffled so much as annoyed by what I perceived
as one more instance of "all the world uses Windows" thinking.

And of
course switching is much easier than going the other way, since there
are widespread interface conventions that carry over from app to app
and even from Windoze to Mac.

(*) The other question is why/whether people who already know GUI
tools should switch to something text-mode. I won't try to make
a case that they should. What I do think is that some people
(particularly those who design software for others to use,
but also anyone smart/determined enough to use the old tools)
should be exposed to the old text-mode tools *in a way that
shows their strengths as well as their weaknesses*.

Tall order; most "exposure" to those tools of anyone not already
expert with the tool in question will give a bad impression, pretty
much without fail.

Quite. Which is why in my role as local expert with these tools
I'm apt to be a bit of an evangelist.

[ snip ]

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.

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