VanLUG Email Archive
Dave Michelson (dmichelson@home.com)
Tue, 26 Jan 1999 22:33:16 -0800
Brian Edmonds wrote:
>
> I'd say the whole expert vs. novice thing was pretty bogus from the
> start.
Let's substitute "frequent vs. casual users" for "expert vs. novice
users".
We begin as...
Novice or casual users who tend to be somewhat compliant and let the
environment tell us how certain tasks should accomplished. We find
prompts, dialog boxes, and GUI's extremely helpful, at least at the
outset.
Soon we tire of the distractions and become....
Expert or frequent users who tend to be somewhat demanding and want to
tell the environment how certain tasks should be accomplished through
suitable configuration and customization. We find endless prompts,
dialog boxes, and GUI's very distracting when we know it should be
possble to accomplish the same task with just a few keystrokes or mouse
clicks. (I'm not implying that frequent users don't like any GUI's.
Just that they want them lean and mean.)
IMHO, Windows is a perfect example of a system designed to appeal to
casual or novice users. UNIX is, of course, designed to appeal to
frequent or expert users. Sadly, there's more than a grain of truth in
Dennis Ritchie's remark that "It takes a genius to appreciate the
simplicity of UNIX."
-- Dave Michelson dmichelson@home.com
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