sturlamolden wrote: > There is a whole generation of computer users out there scared stiff of > using the keyboard. Soon, computers will not have a keyboard at all. > The trend is perhaps more pronounced among managers not writing code > themselves, but "taking decisions" about which tools to use.
Is it just me, or does someone else feel that this is like using magnetic letters on a refrigerator door instead of a pen and paper. My two year old son thinks those magnetic letters are fun, but then he can't write at all. My seven year old has certainly switched to pen and paper (or computer) for 99% of his writing. Sure, they have their use--it might be more effective to write TENNIS with colorful letters across the fridge door in some situation, but most of the time, pen and paper is much more useful. You never run out of letters, and it's easy to draw lines or arrows, complement the text with a little picture etc. The cost for learning the skill to write readable letters is well compensated for... We recently released a toolkit for interfacing our systems with legacy systems, and very soon, people started using it in way we had never expected. I suppose that could be possible with a "visual" tool too, but it seems to me that those tools are typically fairly limited, just as computer based role-playing games are much more limited than the ones played around a table with a good flesh-and-blood game master who can respond to any idea you come up with at the spur of the moment. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
