Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!van-bc!root
From: lphillips@lpami.van-bc.UUCP (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: User friendly?
Message-ID: <1681@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 88 02:37:39 GMT
Sender: root@van-bc.UUCP
Lines: 89


  really a line eater any more?>

In <887@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>, (Jonathan Dubman) writes:

>It takes 1 minute to copy a disk on the Apple II, if you include the 20
>seconds to load the "fast copy" program.

>It takes 10 minutes to copy a disk on the Amiga.

Odd. It takes about 1.5 minutes on my Amiga. let's read on and see what
the problem could be.

>I was in the CLI and did a "run diskcopy".  Diskcopy asked me to press
>return, but because it was being run in the background, didn't accept any
>input from my CLI.  It did, however, change my disk names to "DF0:BUSY" and
>"DF1:BUSY", so that I couldn't access them. 

Ahh... there's the culprit.. operator error. Well, I guess that won't
happen again, right?

> With 1 meg of stuff loaded in ram disk, I was forced to reboot the system.

Compunded by an operator oversight. It always pays to have access to
another CLI, whether from the NewCLI command or by having PopCLI active.

>So I booted up my off-the-shelf Workbench 1.2, intending to copy from there,
>while running Dpaint.  Unfortunately, upon inserting the target disk, the
>system just hung.  Apparently my target disk had some soft errors (nothing
>wrong with the disk itself.)  But that didn't matter - I was about to
>write over it!

Hmmm... should have stuck with the CLI. :-)
This is an area where flames are deserved. To allow a disk with any kind
of error to hang the system or cause a GURU is inexcusable, especially so
when you are about to completely rewrite it.

>Reboot again.  I picked a fresh disk.  I ran Dpaint and then pushed the
>"screen to back" gadget, so I could do the disk copy.  Uh oh - Dpaint
>closed the Workbench screen!  Arrgh!

Nothing to do with the Amiga of course. When a programmer does something
you don't like, you can legitimately flame the programmer, provided of
course that you have considered the problems that might happen if your
wishes were followed.

>So I booted a commercial copy program which effectively takes over the
>machine.  So much for multitasking.

This is a choice made by the operator of the machine.

>I think the next user interface will recognize and exploit patterns in your
>behavior, and additionally allow a natural language description of a command
>that may actually involve many programs.

I think what you are wishing for here is a user interface that exploits
patterns in _your_ behaviour. They already exploit patterns in _my_
behaviour. I (and many other Amiga owners) have no trouble adjusting to
many of the program requirements that are necessitated by the multitasking
nature of the machine, the way things have been implemented, programs that
behave in particular ways, or even flaws in the system software.

As with any tool that is more powerful than the tool you have previously
used, there are cautions to be observed. Considering the power and
complexity of the Amiga when compared to your last computer, it is rather
amazing that it is as easy to use as it is. I can recall spending a very
frustrating week attempting to install a serial card on an Apple IIe. I
never did get it working properly, and to this day have no idea why not,
except that perhaps a few months of experience might have made the job
trivial.

If there is a lesson here, it is that one should always get to know the
tool, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and both exploit and be wary of
its power. A power saw is a great improvement over a hand saw, but you can
easily misuse it, causing more damage, more quickly, and perhaps causing
you to look upon the new tool with a skewed perspective.

>	*&(Jonathan Dubman)

Larry Phillips.

--
The transistor is a curiosity, and will never amount to much.
    -- Mr. Stringer, Basic Electronic Instructor, RCAF, 1962.
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