Re: Great SWT Program

On Oct 8, 5:50 am, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
See recent huge post in which I mention your apparently having gotten
used to it. People were, at one time, used to having every little
bacterial infection be a potential killer, too, before the invention
of antibiotics, but I wouldn't want to turn the clock back.

Nor would I, but relying on the efficacy of antibiotics, and using
them at every opportunity, has apparently had some negative effects.

That still doesn't make the old situation better.

Yeah, right, I just *happened* to pick the worst case purely by
chance. :P

Oh, did you? I assumed you had done it on purpose, to make my
preferred set of tools look as bad as possible.

I just picked the two biggies best known for being difficult to use in
the way of interactive text-mode tools.

Leading, no doubt, to conversations like: "Why don't you turn those
off if they annoy you?" "You can turn them off? How? Please tell
me!" (to paraphrase something that seems rather familiar today...)

Yes, I've had conversations like that with people struggling with
one of the old tools. And?

It means you haven't shown the new tools to be worse in that regard,
just that they aren't always better in that regard. :)

It depends on what they are trying to get an education in. Physics?
Computer programming? Hair-pulling frustration and the joy of slowly
going insane? If the third is one of their preferred subjects of study
then I'd encourage them to try vi or emacs too! ;)

I was thinking mostly of people enrolled in a degree program in
computer science.

Ah, so the latter of my three alternatives then. ;)

I think there might be value in exposing everyone
to some computing platform other than the dominant one, but unless
we can find a way to get around the "only 168 hours in a week" limit,
I wouldn't make vi exposure mandatory for everyone.

Sounds like just using vi is the equivalent of about four full-time
jobs. It's even worse than I thought then.

It's not a high
priority for most. For people in a CS degree program, though --
I think sending them out into the world knowing only one platform,
the one they came in knowing about, would be wrong.

They should certainly know the theory and basics at minimum. Having
them know Windows and Mac, or Windows and Gnome, or Windows and KDE
might be good too...

Hrm. Maybe the psych department needing volunteers and offering free
credits to anyone that drives themselves mad and then checks in with
them? :) OK, enough cute barbs, even if they are serious, it probably
helps a great deal if you are not insisting that your ways are the
best or only ways, the way you sometimes do on usenet. ;)

I don't think I've ever done that, and I resent your saying so,
even with a smiley.

Eh? Didn't this whole discussion start when you championed vi over
anything with a GUI?

No, it didn't. I expressed (semi-mock) puzzlement at your
reference to CharMap and mentioned the tools I use, mainly as
an attempt to point out that "not all the world uses Windows".
How is this different from calling attention to other people's
use of names and acronyms you don't know?

Familiarity with Windows is normal. Being a trivia champ is not (in
some places they hand out a million bucks if you demonstrate that you
are one!) ...

And to paraphrase something you said elsethread -- this may
seem strange to you, but I don't usually say that some piece of
software sucks without trying it, and to the best of my knowledge
I've never used CharMap.

I don't recall you saying that CharMap sucked. Instead you pooh-poohed
Windows and graphical software in general...

Unix of course is susceptible to any clumsy entering of rm /rf *
(particularly in the root directory)

Only when running as root; you're meant to be smart enough ....

and absolutely perfect -- incapable of ever so much as making a single
typo or forgetting something?

I call BS on this claim, once again. Unless there's a "general
paradigm" that explains the keybindings in things like vi and
emacs ... and you can explain it in a paragraph or three ...

Well, then how would you explain the fact that I was able to
learn at least one of those old-time tools (gnuplot) without a
live tutor?

Gnuplot might be a lot easier and more natural than either vi or
emacs. I don't actually know much about it, but what you're saying
implies that it must be.

By "paradigm" I have in mind something broader than keybindings.
I'm not sure I can define it better than that. Maybe another
time.

Keybindings are where the usability problems are though: until you
know them you can't do anything in tools like those, including browse
the help to find out what the keybindings are in any effective way. I
don't know what would form a paradigm that could aid in that situation
other than "always have a cheat-*** handy".

Sure. And they certainly have their place. I'm not disputing
that, and I never have. What I've been saying all along is
that there is also a place for tools that require some learning.

I just don't see the point in a tool *gratuitously* requiring some
learning. If you know how to use one text editor you should be able to
use any; one that purposely is not easy to use even if you already
know other software with the same function seems ... inefficient.

Ideally a tool would make it easy for novices to do simple things,
but still provide a lot of power and flexibility for non-novices.
My feeling is that usually one has to trade off one to get
the other. <shrug>

I don't see why.

P.S. I demand that someone tell me a workaround for that fucking
"exceeded our posting limit" bull*** other than to log out and back
in as someone else. It's a fucking pain in the ass and it risks
fucking data loss because the entire contents of the form have to be
copied and pasted back, and if something else clobbers the fucking
clipboard in the meantime, you're fucked. Add to that that there is no
legitimate purpose to the limit whatsoever (I'm not a spammer,
therefore it should not apply to me; it's easy to program BS like that
to apply only to new users and not ones established for years and
hundreds of posts, or simply to dispense with it entirely and use a
captcha to confirm someone is a human if they seem to be posting a
lot) and they keep lowering it. It seems to now be down into the teens
of posts a day, which is absolutely fucking ludicrous. I insist that I
be exempt!

.