Re: Great SWT Program

On Oct 4, 5:16 am, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.

Eh? That would be true, if their UIs had anything significant in
common (e.g. a standard widget kit was used by both), but that is
simply not the case with the particular tools under discussion here;
every one of them is idiosyncratic to the point that their UIs appear
to have been (and probably were) each developed /de novo/. I challenge
you to tell me *one thing* that would transfer over from vi experience
to make emacs easier to use, or vice versa, and isn't a negative (e.g.
"don't waste your time with the mouse" or some such) or superficial
("both can be started from the command line open to a particular file
with executable_name text_file_name" or whatever); it has to be
something significant involving interactive use of the thing.

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.

That neither claims that the snob factor fails to explain something
nor that the time investment factor does explain everything -- it
doesn't, for example, explain developing new tools in this ancient
style, or learning one in preference to a GUI tool when both are
available. The time investment factor can only explain sticking with a
non-GUI tool learned before GUIs were available.

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.

Since 99% of computer users do, at least part-time, use Windows, it's
a damn close approximation. :P

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.

Just watch you don't become viewed by all and sundry as a symbol of
everything they don't like about those tools (and particularly the
need to frequently reach for the help, plus the only decent help
available being of the "live" variety).

.

Relevant Pages

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