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Vote:Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application
Another 2000 bucks is on the table, and you get to decide who gets it. The nominees for 'Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application' are Pine, Lynx, Mutt, Emacs and Midnight Commander. Go vote to see who gets the money.
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You mean vi isn't a contender???
I'm shocked.
You said: I agree completely, neither vi nor emacs has a very intuitive interface. But I would argue that both have very efficient interfaces for experienced users. This absolutely right. But remember the category is for "best designed" interface, not easiest. Because most people can spend a month or two (or less) as a "new" user and years and years as an experienced user, I would vote for a good interface with a steep learning curve for "best designed".
I'm not even kidding. The gcc CLI is probably one of the most intiutive for a compiler I have ever learned.
Not trying to start a holy war here, but on the "intuitive" scale, both emacs and vi are complete crap. They're both about expert performance, and we'll leave it to personal preference after that. Not that I'm saying that vi should have been nominated, but something that should get a 1/10 on the "intuitive" scale shouldn't be nominated-- and that includes emacs.
gdb is clearly the most userfriendly non-GUI program around.
On second thoughts, GNU info wins - you need to use it in order to read the instructions. doh!
Easy to use. Intuitive. Bug-free. It's the simplicity of design that other programs can only hope to emulate.
by kuro5hin
For a long time now, those who want to use and improve the slashdot code have been wondering, and waiting, and hoping for the much promised 0.4 tarball. Many of them have in fact become quite irate about the lag between code releases, the lack of a CVS server, and the overall appearance that the slashdot gang doesn't practice what it preaches ("release early, release often"). How would you respond to these criticisms, and do you intend to change the development practices in any way in the future?
CmdrTaco:
I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release. My usual response is to tell them that I delay the release by 24 hours each time someone asks me when a new Slash tarball will be out.
Seriously, there are only 3 people who really know how much work a source release for this is: CowboyNeal, Patrick and Me. And the three of us have been working on a lot of stuff. As I write this, we are bugfixing and documenting and preparing for a source release. There is a private CVS server that one day soon will be publicly read only.
This isn't like other projects: it has been custom fit to our hardware and to our needs. It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code. We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people compile mod_perl and tune Apache. We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.
It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of the source code every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new source release is secondary: Our job is running Slashdot. We want to release new versions of Slash, but it is a definite second priority to keeping Slashdot moving.
Finally, it's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.
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I agree completely, neither vi nor emacs has a very intuitive interface. But I would argue that both have very efficient interfaces for experienced users. Yes, the learning curve is steeper. But once you have made it a good way up the curve, you can get things done much, much faster than you could in any more "intuitive" interface.
I have nothing against easy-to-learn applications, they should exist for people who prefer them, but "expert" level interfaces like vi and emacs can't be beat for getting complex tasks done very quickly.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Nah, Mutt is the best text interface... or maybe vim. But definately not Pine.
Interfaces don't need to be intuitive to be good. vi has a splendid interface. The average unix shell has spectacular interface. Sure you're never going to see an book about either in the "Interfaces for Idiots" series. Comparatively, you'll also never see an interface (GUI or non-) that has a easy learning curve for the beginner that doesn't become unnecessarily complex and unweildy for the power user.
Yes. However, this doesn't deserve an award. The GUI was developed by Symantec in the early 90's. They had a product for DOS named Norton Commander and MC is a clone of NC... get it. :)
Anyway. If anyone deserves the award it is an Engineer at Symantec.
Kevin
how could they forget NetHack? Yea Gods.
For what Emacs is, and the ways it can and is used, its just the best. The learning curve is steeper, but its designed to be efficient, not intuitive, especially after using it for 15 years since I had "MEmacs" on the Amiga, its very efficient. (offtopic:) Anyone know of a win32 port?
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
When I started with Linux in 1995 I was really impressed with its interface and nothing on the console has bettered it.
As for Emacs, you have to be joking. I like Emacs as an editor but the interface has a lot to be desired, you can't call it intuitive.
Pine's interface is easy to use but not as good as the Midnight Commander.
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Posted with Mozilla