Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Making Things Easy Is Hard

Posted by simoniker on from the esr-and-the-printer-cable-of-secrets dept.

paul.dunne writes "John Gruber of Daring Fireball has written a long and considered riposte to Eric Raymond's recent lament concerning the poor quality of user interfaces in free software. The core of his argument is that 'developing software with a good UI requires both aptitude and a lot of hard work.' One point that particularly struck me: according to Gruber, 'Unix nerds who care about usability are switching to Mac OS X in droves'!"

3 of 980 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Elegance In General Is Hard by easter1916 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I wouldn't regard "Arts and Crafts Style" as any better than Ikea! The phrase suggests shoddy crap with seashells on it to me... but good point.

  2. Re:Different strokes for different folks by drsmithy · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    Usable for me is being able to read the man page once, write a script to automate it, and never have to look at the damn thing again until someone comes up with a better widget that does what I need faster/cheaper/better.

    How is that a measure of usability ? You're not _using_ it...

  3. gruber no guide by cinnamon+colbert · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    anyone who puts text like that on a colored background don't know jack