On Sun, 15 Jul 2012, Miles Fidelman wrote: > I keep coming back to the notion that transparent tools are really > important - there's something about impedance matching between what > we're trying to do and the tools we use. All too often, computer tools > seem to make things harder, not easier - word processors make it easier > to write,
Well, I can agree word processor makes it easy to write "something". But if I ever intended a long term relation with my text, like writing a book (and later, maybe, revise or update it over years) - WPs are out of equation for me. I would use LaTeX on some baretext editor (emacs, even vim would do the job). True, it is not "oozerfriendly" (because there is no place on it to put such sticker) and to start using it requires reading at least portions of the manual (in my case, the portions totaled were about a size of "printer test" magazine article - is it really that big?). On the bright side, it retains compatibility with itself, it renders text the same over the years (I expect it does - last time I checked it rendered my master thesis the same after 13 years) and doesn't give me nasty surprises (I don't expect it would). For example, a fancy bug where old versions of text are retained in a doc file (_after_ one _erases_ them) is nonexistent in tex, unless I explicitely put it there (say, in comments). And of course it is much easier to work with structured texts (i.e. once I make chapters, paragraphs, tables and the like, they stay there until the data gets corrupted or Universe ends or something like this). So, if you mean "easy now", sure, all kind of transparent tools are cool. OTOH if you mean "easy integrated over time" - the cool can all to fast become "cool like hell". And I would rather do it my own uncool and uneasy way (which somehow turns out to be cooler and easier, once we include more factors into equation, factors the unexperienced has no idea about - but the real surprise is a number of unexperienced among profs). Of course there are entry barriers to computers. There always were, there always will be. There are entry barriers to riding a bicycle, too. One has to follow instructions and practice until one gets used to it. If I would have to point at guilty, the "current sorry state of personal computing" has been caused by making things too easy for novice, without accounting for needs of seasoned users. We are novices only once, after that we are not anymore. The "hardness" you write about is, from my POV, just dumbing down the tool, so one has to use dumber and dumber ways of working with it. No surprise it gets hard as one's experience rises. Another reason is giving up better ways of doing stuff where there is short term incentive. I'm not sure when longterm stopped being part of the plan, but once it did, no amount of marketing is going to help. > but drawing programs are not really an improvement over paper and pencil > until we get to things like animation, and do we really don't want to > have to write a c program to write an essay or draw a picture? Oh wait a little. All I want is e-paper based tablet... > So I kind of wonder if part of the underlying issue is a mismatch between > "something interesting to say" and the tools we have available. The tools "we" have. They are not used because there is no marketing and hype about them. They are overally uncool, because they do the job without blinking transparent windows and colored 3d cubes spining. And they insist that user _learns_ to use them. On the other hand, if there is only one shelf with dumbed down tools available for "end user", there is not much to be done with it. If you have "little carpenter" toolbox, with toy hammers, saws and nails, you can mostly do toy chairs with them, expecting more would be inapropriate. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
