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Explaining The Windows/UNIX Cultural Divide
giampy writes "Joel Spolsky writes a review-like article on the last book of Eric S. Raymond (The Art of Unix Programming). His views on the cultural differences among Windows and Unix programmers are well explained. Overall, an interesting read." Also on the topic of Windows, badriram writes "Microsoft is reorganizing the windows team, it seems the are separating the
OS core development. Seems like things heading in the right direction in creating a more secure OS, and making it more business oriented. Read the
article here."
Check out Monad, the OO extendable command shell for Longhorn. Quite interesting.
Btw, on 2000 and XP (maybe 9x too), you can assign a shortcut to the command prompt, say Ctrl+Alt+S, so hitting that will get you a command prompt quickly. And enabling autocomplete to and QuickEdit and Insert modes on cmd.exe adds a lot to productivity too.
Go somewhere random
Don't worry, plenty of slow readers have gone on to lead successful lives.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Well... why do you need a password to run something on your own computer?
It's sitting right there in your home office. Behind at least one locked door. Maybe even a couple.
I mean, I have my machine set up to automatically log me in; I turn it on and there it is, ready to go. There's me, my room-mate, and nobody else. I trust my room-mate to stay off my machine; she trusts me to stay off of hers.
egypt urnash minimal art.
He will be sorely missed.
Sourcely missed! SOURCELY! He was an advocate of open SOURCE, you idiot, not open...oh. Nevermind.
Although I understand and agree with your basic point, I would ask that you consider the "product" of a computer and how that relates to average "consumers" need for a tool to make their lives easier/more entertained (because that is, after all, the basic reason why average consumers purchase computers).
Consumers want a tool to use, whether it be for games, email, finances, or just internet surfing. Quite frankly they don't want to spend a ton of time learning about how to use it, and many don't care how or why it works just as long as it does work.
The tug-of-war that exists is that computers by their nature are complex and flexible. Consumers by their nature are very insistant on their desires which in include simplicity, flexability, safety, cost, and utility.
Calling them "stubborn idiots" only highlights the divide of understanding between the computer literate that understand and desire ultimate flexibility, and the average consumer that just wants to use their computer, like a toaster or a vcr or a Sony playstation, without a lot of hastle.
Somehow the creators (programmers and hardware vendors) need to accomodate for that, because I assure you that the average consumer won't change.
Although I despise Microsoft's business ethics, I appreciate their dedication to the principle that I mentioned above.
Linux is in a very good position to make headways in this regard as well, but it will take a fundamental understanding by the programmers and harware teams of said principle to make real headways in the desktop market.
Anything less will ultimately limit the adoption of Linux to, for example, server, web, and corporate applications.
"The masses" are what they are, and deriding them for it won't influence them to change, however it will influence them to avoid the product.
Lets find a way to meet them where they are while preserving the fundamentals.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
No, seriously? Windows GUIs suck... compared to what?
Compared to X? The same X where every single programmer just _has_ to use a different layout, different shortcuts, different menu structure, and for bonus points his own widgets? And where 90% of the GUIs were never even tested in any other resolution or font size than what the developper had? (Here's a hint: 100 DPI fonts are an X standard for a long time now.) And where every app is configured in a different way? And in some cases (e.g., IceWM), contrary to common sense, the changes you do through the menus aren't even saved, and you have to launch a different application to configure your start menu?
Sorry, from the end user point of view, it's the Unix GUIs that suck big time. They suck like an industrial vacuum cleaner. They suck like an expensive hooker.
They're made by geeks, for geeks. And religiously defended by hordes of flaming trolls, ready to insult everyone who dares doubt their idol's wisdom.
What a non-geek user expects is to learn some skills once, and apply those skills again and again. It doesn't matter if you have some cute unique idea. He just doesn't want to have to learn a whole new set of skills for every single program.
He wants that if in Word CTRL+X is "cut", then in every single program it's still "cut". He wants that if F1 is "Help", then by God, it better be "Help" in all programs. And if one program's scrollbars behave in one particular way, then it better be the same way in all programs.
For you discovering how yet another widget set works might count as fun. For Joe Average, it counts as a waste of his time. He'd rather do something else in that time. Like be done sending that e-mail, grab a beer and watch TV, instead of still being at discovering how it works.
And yes, the Windows developpers know that it pays to care about the paying customer. That means, yes, caring about Joe Average who's using those programs. Thinking how you can help Joe Average do what _he_ wants, instead of making it all an exercise in programming for your own ego.
And until more of the Linux crowd discovers the same thing, I just can't see Linux making it big on the desktop. Sorry.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Y'know, people keep saying that this is such a trivial little matter of implementation, but I can't help but observe that 20 years after the Macintosh came out, cut and paste in X windows is still completely fucking broken.
At some point, you have to abandon the excuses and admit that it's not just an implementation problem, it's a broken paradigm.
DEVELOPER: "Here's our GUI! Enjoy!"
USER: "Wow, thanks! This sure is pretty. So, how do I cut and paste?"
DEVELOPER: "Well, that depends on which toolkit the app you're running uses."
USER: "Uh, OK. Thanks." [user turns off computer, goes back to his Windows or OS X machine.]
In the above scenario, the user is right, and the developer is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.