Author: Keith Evans
Date: 16:23:42 05/24/02
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On May 24, 2002 at 14:00:24, Roy Eassa wrote: >On May 24, 2002 at 11:07:45, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: > >>guys cut the crap. Case sensivity in a nerd programming >>languages is not the same like case sensivity for >>the normal average user who will never ever in his >>life spell the word 'compiler'. >> >>also not a single user is able to use the command line. This >>was a major problem in the DOS time. >> >>Even today some companies ask me to install simple dos command >>line software (all banks and other financial institutes still use DOS >>clients to novell servers, some banks still use the completely >>failed OS/2). They can't even install a floppy disk which says: >> >>"type a:install at the dos command prompt" >> >>that's way too hard for average users. > > >Vincent, you have a good sense for the needs of the non-technical user. For a >techie like you (and me), that's rare. There are literally hundreds of millions >of reasonably smart humans who could benefit from technology (computers and >other stuff too) but only if it's made less "technical." In a place as highly >techie as a computer chess forum, such humans are generally underrepresented, to >say the least. I think you have a very perceptive take on this issue. My mother has been using computers for almost 20 years. A couple years back she managed to get her pilots license and now flies small airplanes all by herself. She even literally built a house recently - not hired people to build it, literally planned and built it. But in the world of PC's she can still get absolutely stuck when she does something as simple as leaving a Windows 2000 formatted floppy in the machine when rebooting. I recently got a panicked phone call about the obscure message "NTLOADER not found." I could totally understand how this was baffling and downright scary to her - now imagine trying to get her to screw around with LILO and XF86Config for starters. Or using bash and writing awk/perl scripts in vi. These tools only work for those that have the desire to tweak. Sure they are powerful and I use them to do my job everyday, but I would never recommend them to the average user that just wants to get the job done and turn off the computer. One of these days I'll have to take a look at OS X and see how good a job they did. The next OS for my mom? Maybe we need some sort of ELO scale for computer users so that we can make recommendations based on the user's rating.
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