Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!spolsky-avram
From: spolsky-avram@CS.YALE.EDU (Joel Spolsky)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: computer follies
Message-ID: <37584@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: 11 Sep 88 16:56:23 GMT
References: <5856@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <57438@ti-csl.CSNET> <741@etive.ed.ac.uk> <1037@bucket.UUCP> <927@crcmar.uucp>
Sender: root@yale.UUCP
Reply-To: spolsky@yale.edu (Joel Spolsky)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT  06520-2158
Lines: 28

In article <927@crcmar.uucp> patrick@crcmar.UUCP (Andrew Patrick) writes:
|                                                 One student read
| the first instruction page and then paused for a very long time, so I
| asked him what the problem was.  He said "It says press any key to
| continue."  I said "So, what's the problem?"  He said "I can't find
| the 'any' key!"
| 
| The software now says "Press <RETURN> to continue."

Gee, my computer doesn't have a <RETURN> key ;-)

The four stages in computer literacy:
    novice - doesn't realize that RETURN, Enter, and <-' all mean the
same thing
    literate - knows that Return = Enter and regularly tells novices
to hit "return" when the keyboard is plainly marked "Enter"
    hopelessly overqualified - gets confused between line feeds,
carriage returns, ^J, enter, ctrl-Enter, meta-shift-ctrl-Enter, ...
    wizard - understands why sometimes when you hook up a PC to a
mainframe you get double-spaced output and knows instinctively what to
do about it (wizards probably also know how to get the Symbolics
terminal emulator to clear on backspace instead of overprinting, but
that's a different issue).

Joel Spolsky             bitnet: spolsky@yalecs     uucp: ...!yale!spolsky
Yale University          arpa:   spolsky@yale.edu   voicenet: 203-436-1483
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some
watery tart threw a sword at you!!