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From: magnus%thep.lu.se@Urd.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Computers for users not programmers
Message-ID: <1991Jan29.150122.4454@lth.se>
Date: 29 Jan 91 15:01:22 GMT
References: <1991Jan28.112723.15274@lth.se> <12830@lanl.gov> <4724@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: newsuser@lth.se (LTH network news server)
Reply-To: magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson)
Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund university, Sweden
Lines: 69

In article <4724@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <12830@lanl.gov>, jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>> From article <1991Jan28.112723.15274@lth.se>, by magnus%thep.lu.se@Urd.lth.se (Magnus Olsson):
>> > [...]                                                Instead of forcing people
>> > to adapt to computers, wouldn't it be much nicer if we adapted computers to 
>> > people? 
>> 
>> Exactly!!
>> 
>> J. Giles
>
>This is exactly wrong.  It assumes that the computer can be programmed to do
>exactly what the user wants.  In my experience, this is far from the case.
[rest of article deleted to save bandwidth]

I'm not quite sure what you mean, or why you think it is wrong to adapt computers
to people, but I think you might have misunderstood me.

I do *not* subscribe to the doctrine that you should make computers "user 
friendly" by "castrating" them (amputating features). "Make a system even a fool
can use, and only a fool will want to use it". Alas, lots of software produced
today seems to follow that principle. 

What I would like to see is systems that are intuitively easy to use, while still
being as powerful as hairy, command-driven systems. For example, Unix has a very
steep learning curve, but once you're over the threshold, it allows you to work
a lot more effectively than with for example a Macintosh. However, if you give 
a 'typical user' the choice between a Mac and a Unix workstation, he/she will in
all probability choose the Mac. If forced to use Unix, he/she will never learn
more than the most common commands (ls, cat, rm, mv and the command to start the
word processor) and then complain about that "you can't do anything on this 
machine" (I've seen this happen). If someone could find an intuitive, graphic
way of representing Unix's command structure without sacrificing any of the power, 
IMHO that would be a Good Thing. Even if it meant sacrificing some of the power,
it would probably mean that the user could work more efficiently than before.

Let's face it, Mr. Rubin: You may be a Real Programmer (or whatever you choose
to call yourself), and I may be a hacker. We may be willing to invest some time
in learning to utilize computers optimally (in your case, it seems you're really
making them jump through hoops). But most users are decidedly *not* willing to 
do that. They want to use their computers to do some specific task, as simply
as possible. If we can make it simpler for them to do more than that specific
task, we may find that they actually do learn as they go. Many total 'computer
illiterates' have become power users thanks to the simple interface of the Mac -
when they found out that they actually could understand what was going on, they
got interested and wanted to learn more. Compare this to the common reaction to
MS-DOS - "No, I don't want to know how to delete files (or whatever) - it's
sufficiently complicated as it is" - an attitude I've encountered only too often.

However, if we take the elitist attitude that "I'm not going to adapt my computer
to any stupid users - if they want to use it, they'd better learn to use it 
properly", we'll continue to see the great mass of users alienated from what could
perhaps have been their most important tool, had they been able to utilize to
a greater extent.

Of course, I'd like as much as you would to see a world where *everybody* could
squeeze the last ounce of performance out of their computers. However, for
the foreseeable future, that must remain a utopic vision. What we *can* do is
making it simpler for users to use at least a part of their computers' full
potential. That does *not* have to mean that we make it impossible for 
knowledgeable people to use their knowledge as before - just as having a nice,
integrated, user-friendly programming environment doesn't mean that you have
to forbid the use of hand-optimized machine code.

Magnus Olsson                   | \e+      /_
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