Re: Great SWT Program

On Oct 10, 6:17 am, blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes. They pretty much get exposure to some Linux "desktop
environment" as a side effect of using Linux at all. But it's not
clear this is much of a paradigm shift. It's like saying they
should learn something about both C++ and Java, which is good,
without adding that they also should learn something about a
functional language as well.

Should they though?

For myself. Can you find a post in which I said everyone should
prefer text-mode tools to GUIs? I'm not finding anything like that
on a quick review of the record.

Not in those exact words no, but you implied a claim that GUIs were
inferior in this newsgroup.

You, however, seem to be saying that your way (GUIs) is the only
way. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding. It happens.

I'm saying that making full use of a) common interface standards and
b) the full input and output capabilities of the hardware allows
better, easier to use software. These days, this means GUI software
*can be* superior to all non-GUI software in a particular task domain.
It doesn't mean that the superior software was actually written and
made available, but it certainly can be.

I've said that I think it usually has some limitations that I find
annoying, and I'm willing to give up some novice-friendliness to
have access to tools that don't have the limitations I find annoying.

If you're already a non-novice with those, then I can see that.

I'm not sure I can imagine a system that's powerful enough to
let you do anything you might reasonably want to do that won't
also allow you to sometimes make a huge mess -- unless "anything
you might reasonably want to do" is defined to be somewhat more
restrictive than I think most people would like.

There's a big difference between "allow you to sometimes make a huge
mess" and "make it bloody easy, and indeed hard to avoid". We all
agree that stairs are useful things. They let you have buildings that
are taller and can hold more stuff. On the other hand it's possible to
fall down them.

Many of the tools you recommend have lots of creaky old stairs and no
lights. This seems to create an environment that outright encourages
falling down the damn things. Is it too much to ask to be able to see
WTF you're doing at least with the more dangerous, potentially-system-
hosing functionality? Apparently so. :)

There's also this nifty thing that, used right, makes *really* tall
buildings practical and can be safer too. It's called an
elevator ... :)

Based on what you've said here, I find it highly unlikely you'd
find it either easy or natural: It's interactive, but with
command-line-style interface, and a built-in help system unlike
either man or info pages. I'm not sure I find it easy or natural
either, just useful, and worth the trouble of learning to use.

How the hell are you supposed to get started using something like
that? :P

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".

Yup -- until the keybindings, at least a few of them, including
the one(s) for getting help, become part of one's mental furniture.

How sucky. GUIs allow you to be productive earlier than that point,
and without requiring printed materials that you might not even have.

"Easy for novices" and "complying with my ideas about scriptabilty
and playing nice with the Unix philosophy" aren't mutually
exclusive in principle. In practice, I'm not sure I know of any
tools that are both. As for why that is -- my guess would be
that developers on both sides of the GUI/CLI divide figure they
have finite resources and shouldn't spend them trying to attract
people who are unlikely to like their stuff anyway.

I don't see how that follows, unless you mean to imply that a GUI
automatically fails to "play nice with the Unix philosophy".

.

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