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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: Re: 'vi' vs. other word processors
Message-ID: <1307@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Tue, 16-Sep-86 21:59:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.1307
Posted: Tue Sep 16 21:59:20 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Sep-86 03:25:36 EDT
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 106


I've done this sort of thing several times in the past several years
(set people up with word processing, secty's, faculty etc.)

I think what we need is facts. Not sure what that means exactly,
perhaps some human engineer types can fill in the details.

I found my experiences very anti-intuitive so I am very suspicious
of all the pat and "right-sounding" answers being proferred on this
list.

Right now, I'm doing it again (more or less, this time there are quite
a few people involved.)

I keep having that experience (still) of walking into a room full of
people for a meeting (mostly management types) who proceed to tell me
with great authority that secretaries can't possibly learn UNIX, we
can use UNIX, but we must find some sort of captive idiot program.

I think they're full of s**t. At least, they deny all my experiences.
[btw, how many of your secretaries have gone to college? most? hmmm,
how long before we decide that a baboon is anything that walks on two
legs and has less than a PHD?]

Similarly, I guess people can't possibly use a system that, to contact
someone, requires the keying in of a 5 to 18 digit number.

But they do (our phone system.)

Ah, but perhaps they can do it, but can they do it well?

Who knows, can they do anything well? You entrust them with your sacred
documents, but can't expect them to edit and chew gum at the same time.

I don't think we have the vaguest idea what we are talking about.

I could believe that some of the idiot systems let people learn a few
things quickly, but after the first few days they tend to be
frustrating because they are so limiting. It's like a car that only
goes 10 mph, sure, it'd be easier to learn how to drive, but who would
want to use it after that?

I guess we can approach the problem like a math proof (that is, presume
that cold logic will suffice where we have no actual facts.) We can
say things like:

	A good word-processing environment must have X,Y,Z.

	Product A has X,Y,Z; therefore it is good. QED.

Doesn't mean anything though.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, most "word processors" are
chosen by management for various reasons (I could tell you stories...)

Worse, a lot of the "customers" do in fact have a hard time evaluating
a product. The suggestion "have the customers (eg. secretaries) try
it" is laughable. Some perhaps. But if they've never used such systems
what can they possibly say except that this one seemed easier/harder
during the first 10 minutes they've ever been exposed to such a thing.

How does that reflect on what their opinions might be 6 months from now?

Utter bulls**t.

As I heard someone say once, the most amazing thing about all the
technological devices we use are the people who use them.

I'm serious, I do this stuff for real. The stuff I am hearing on this
list sounds like the same stinking pile I hear "in real life", not
surprising.

The funny thing is, the people who talk about what certain people
are too stupid to do seem to be working from modus ponens and
some sort of wierd extrapolation.

The people with experiences to speak about seem to admit that the
people they work with have pretty much adapted well to just about
anything that was handed to them (or, put better, if it was reasonably
useful to a "wizard", the "lesser beings" found it useful also.)

Only experienced carpenters ever use hammers very well, but I'm not
sure that's an argument for soft headed hammers for everyone else.
The rest of us can still manage to get a nail driven in, give or take
a few surface mars and some wasted time.

I think the only thing important with a lot of these activities is
being able to understand the goal, and I think most secretaries
understand what a well typed memo should look like (how many TeX/Troff
etc wizards do? Swell, beautifully typeset but not worth a damn
according to the style guide, hmm, who's the idiot?)

What are your assumptions? Are you sure? I'm not being contentious,
I'm serious. Or, at least I'm not sitting here arguing that a system
that makes you type SHIFT-Z is OBVIOUSLY easier for a secretary to
learn than a system that makes you type CONTROL-Z (I presume that
comes from programmers who remember that control characters confused
them early on in their programs, not someone who is facing the fact
that in one case you hold down one key and strike another and in the
other case you...of course it is intuitively obvious that SHIFT is
more mnemonic than CONTROL for introducing control functions, oh foo,
I must have said that wrong, it didn't sound right...)

I dunno. But at least I admit it...

	-Barry Shein, Boston University