APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ?

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Mon May 6 16:37:43 2002

see below, plz..

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Raymond Moyers" <rmoyers_at_nop.org>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor, Anything !Windows = Cryptic ?


> On Monday 06 May 2002 14:52, you wrote:
>
> > If you configure *nix well, it's still cryptic and impenetrable to the
> > uninitiated.
> >
> > > Honestly, though, if you'd like a system that a monkey can use,
> > > it must only do things which a monkey would like to do. ;)
>
> > That's a point that's difficult to dispute.
>
> On the otherhand, if you do away with the character that makes
> it so "cryptic" ( make it act like the other crap )
>
> Then its value is lost.
>
> As for me, its savior was bash and the editor in mc

What's a bash? ... and what's mc? Would the man on the street know that?

>
That may be true, but if you are sitting at computer keyboard for the first
time in your life, how do you know what to do?
>
> Unix, for years, shipped with a editor nobody could use
> and backspace key that did not work, and seemed rigged
> deliberate to prevent anyone but a machosist from
> ever learning enough to discover the power lurking
> therein, by sending all who dare attempt away
> frustrated and with a new object for their HATE.
>
> Linux is the first nix i saw that came out of the install
> with a working backspace key and several editors
> that a person new to Unix could use.
>
Maybe someday someone will write a DOSEMU that works like DOS, and a WINE that
actually executes Windows App's. That would go a long way to ending the MS
monopoly on user-friendly, and make it possible for 3rd-party application
developers to get up some applicatons that really work.
>
> I credit these two things for its success, no longer
> did it have two most fierce deterrents to learning.
>
I think the learning is, in itself, a deterrent. I think what promotes the
learning best is making the system such that one can do something one wants to
do right out of the box and then letting people learn what they have to along
the way.
Received on Mon May 06 2002 - 16:37:43 BST