theruran ππ΄
I love that Don Norman gave the foreword for the UNIX-Haters Handbook (1994) and he cites his own paper from 1981:
Norman, D. A. The Trouble with Unix: The User Interface is Horrid. Datamation, 27 (12) 1981, November. pp. 139-150. Reprinted in Pylyshyn, Z. W., & Bannon, L. J., eds. Perspectives on the Computer Revolution, 2nd revised edition, Hillsdale, NJ, Ablex, 1989.
theruran ππ΄
I find it important that he says here and in his book The Invisible Computer (1999) that we must start from scratch:
#Unix was designed for the computing environment of then, not the machines of today. Unix survives only because everyone else has done so badly. There were many valuable things to be learned from Unix: how come nobody learned them and then did better? Started from scratch and produced a really superior, modern, graphical operating system?
Rob
@natecull @theruran I remember how Apple shipped software with the IIgs to teach you how to use it.
And then they stopped doing that.
I'm a programmer and I don't know all the damn gestures on an iPad!
Nate Cull
"Why are programmers -- particularly the ones who talk a lot about Constant Refactoring -- so bad at refactoring the languages, editors and operating systems they use, to make them more humane?" is a question that endlessly fascinates me.
Up there with "why does Computer Science / Data Processing / Information Technology as a field seem really bad at keeping track of its own history?"
Rob
@natecull @theruran I would add that we're damn good at making the systems so damn opaque it's hard for people to figure out how they work.
That's my passion project.
Nate Cull
It really bugs me that mobile touchscreen systems are actually much more opaque than 1990s desktops used to be. So many hidden, non-discoverable gestures.
I'm sure whoever has been in charge of very expensive and very scientific data-driven UX development for the last 10 years did not intend for that to be the outcome.
But that was the outcome regardless.
Nate Cull
"Hard to learn expert interfaces" are a thing, yes. We shouldn't make things harder for experts just to make things easier for casual users.
But.
So much of the time, a lot of what even experts do is needlessly overcomplicated for no reason.
I'm thinking about the historical nightmare of mathematical notation, for example. Pi vs Tau. So many things that could easily be improved, yet numbing oneself to the pain becomes a professional hazing ritual, badge of honour.
meejah
@natecull @theruran (To be clear, I think we could make things a lot better than they are, but hard-to-learn / "expert" interfaces are _not_ bad per se -- see cars, musical instruments, most sports -- we just have this weird expectation that everything should be easy?
(And of course "capitalism" probably gets in the way too...short-term gratification etc)
meejah
@natecull @theruran Unix is a lot better for experts at it than the GUI alternatives. Do _you_ want a GUI-first text-editor that e.g. uses the mouse and menus a lot (or one that has customizable shortcuts etc etc)
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