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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'!"

2 of 980 comments (clear)

  1. 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...

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

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