I didn't know that about Vista. It sounds like you are you still physical modems, it has been a lot of years but things like connection rate baud) are important to figuring out if the connection is dirty (like someone picked up the phone during the connect).
But if so that's Microsoft's typical remove features once this is not a point of evaluation. For example when there was no browser competition. They did that with I.E. I.E. 4/4.5 had tons more features than I.E. 6.
And I agree on register dumps. That is useless for anyone except sometimes the programmer. I don't even care about the register dumps when diagnosing problems in my own code.
In the 1980's, if you had a computer at home you were probably "in the know" or financially bound to learn to use the computer properly.
I don't know what you mean by "in the know". Yes people knew more than they do today, perhaps. They tended to be genuine experts in one complex application, like WordPerfect/Wordstar, or Lotus 1-2-3. They understood different computers used different software but they generally was just as confused (if not moreso) than people today about RAM vs. ROM vs. OS vs. Applications. They weren't genuinely technical. And they were a broad demographic.
Your welder friend might be a good analogy to what people were like back then. Lets say he uses a CAD program, maybe even knows autolisp, and knows the computer does email but he doesn't really use it. That's kinda what they were like.
Then you are failing to follow the thread. The original poster's argument was that people in 2008 can't follow CLI instructions even if they are easier and less complex than the GUI instructions.
I do agree with you but again to use this example an error message like:
Microsoft Word had an error (de-refenced a null pointer). Word will restart automatically and attempt to restore from where you left off. If this is new persistent behavior and you recently have updated your operating system or changed any related software this is the most like cause, and you may want to contact the publishers of the various products. If you have not changed anything and this problem is persisting it may the result of a virus of hardware failure. You should perform diagnostics or contact administrative support.
Of all the workstation businesses Sun (under McNealy) was far and away the most successful and lasted the longest. It was the only one that is in any meaningful sense still in business. It is also probably had more effect on the server market than all the rest combined.
Finally during the 1990s the goal of Linux was to provide the features of Sun. Sun was the target, that is Sun was the trend setter.
You are a little out of data. Snow Leopard server has ZFS as the default. They have also indicated they intend to make this move on the client OS very soon which probably means 10.7.
Its interesting you are actually arguing the opposite of many of the other people who are saying the problem is that people don't want to learn anything about computers.
I agree with what you wrote. The current versions of windows shells lack the kinds of feedback and help the older versions did./? doesn't work as well as it used to since the assumption is you are using some sort of offline documentation.
The point is though that instructions given this way aren't impossible for end users to execute. I agree with you though that they require deeper knowledge to understand a "why did I do what I just did". If you assume people want that then its gets really bad.
As for apache conf. GUIs for something that complicated that actuallly exposed the complexity would be tremendously complicated. On the order of say Access or oracle's init configuration. And what seems to work the best for both those apps is allowing people to go from GUI -> text file and text file -> GUI. Back and forth since both configuration systems obscure too much for different reasons.
I agree with what you wrote regarding self discovery. And in fact it is one of the reasons I like GUIs with levels, even though that is considered very bad. I also agree that an old fashioned CLI doesn't provide the "how to get started" prompt that people often need.
Well fish (which is a new shell) goes in that direction:
"Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell Type help for instructions on how to use fish"
with a nice menu driven help system.
Remember when you are talking about bash you are talking about something designed to look and act like the Thompson shell from 1971. They have gotten better. The goal of the 1960s-70s shells was often to minimize keystrokes and feedback at 110 baud or 300 baud. By 2400 baud that isn't even important anymore. Now that people are at 10 million baud.
Lets do your mp3 example and if you don't mind I'll use port since that's what I use on this system:
port --help : ok got the list of obvious commands
Hmmm I want to find an mp3 player port search mp3 -- gives me 26 different options. Most aren't players so I do get the discovery options you mentioned. I like the looks of moc and madplay
port info moc port info madplay -- I got detailed descriptions and moc sounds better
port install moc -- don't have permissions wonder why
man port -- oh I have to use sudo
sudo port install moc -- it worked!
Under a minute even with a few problems. Honestly that's less complex than what people do today with finding files on the internet trying to get information..... __________
Now your example is a good one. Because someone using a GUI still has to figure out what their A drive is (which contains wiz.exe) and I assume has to know to use wiz.exe and not wiz.bat or wiz.com (since otherwise A:\wiz would have worked).
That is they actually are having to know the same information but.... it is obscured by additional information which is irrelevant.
And again the point of the grandparent was that doing exactly what you did 25 years ago is impossible for today's users. My point (I think phrased badly) was that if you are going to give people complex instructions beyond they are going to understand anyway the CLI is not a bad way to do it. And further that people can understand instructions of the same complexity they did then. If you look at the responses there really is a belief that users have become complete idiots and are unable to handle "type A:\wiz.exe" to play your game.
I don't know if there is that much difference between who used them in the 1980s and today in terms of IQ. In the 1980s the big divides were age and economic class. It wasn't really education or intelligence.
That's a good answer. I can buy the expectation of complexity has changed.
But the issue in the GP's post is that people couldn't / wouldn't. In other words in his opinion they would rather greater complexity if it means a GUI over a CLI set of instructions.
format copy xcopy (and the difference with copy) rename move 2 stage printing they quite often understood how an operating system loaded to understand what the difference between config.sys and autoexec.bat was
A fairly large percentage. Probably in the 15% range or so. It wasn't some small niche. It had a great deal to do with economic and age. Given the lower cost, greater importance and the fact that a whole generation has now passed....
Another fairly large percentage used either PCs or curses based systems at work, that gets you in the 35% range or so.
Yeah absolutely that was the "integrated office suite" $99 / $129 for the entire Microsoft Office. WordPefect eventually bundled with QuatroPro and Paradox for the same price but there was no integration.....
WordPerfect wasn't a "real failure" when Word took over. It was just a disappointment, hadn't gotten much better in a while. Then there were a few minor problems.
WordPerfect for Windows came out 6 months after Word for Windows and it was still quite good. It probably could have beaten Word. But then the era of the integrated office suite hit and market share dove over the next few years.
There was no great failure just mild disappointment.
In reading your comments and the responses below I was thinking you might enjoy the most famous counterpoint:
But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the. same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our mind for a moment. And for good reason; --There is indeed rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful' but there is something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety.But it requires a strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to. the perception of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again ; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new.d different things; that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print; and that we may without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many other self-evident things are by false teaching. Nothing millions of variations in itself ; for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to infinity , while a circular arch is always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in culminating energy ; and their influence, wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic types being always first shown by greater irregularity and richer variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other recognizable outward sign of the Gothic mind. The variety of the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from mere love of change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty,-subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did. If they
The "reason" Linux is going to give is the ability to respond to customization. For example 1024x600 screens (netbooks). Windows apps aren't designed to work well on that sort of odd shape or at that resolution. Linux apps because of X are generally designed to work well on just about any shape.
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I didn't know that about Vista. It sounds like you are you still physical modems, it has been a lot of years but things like connection rate baud) are important to figuring out if the connection is dirty (like someone picked up the phone during the connect).
But if so that's Microsoft's typical remove features once this is not a point of evaluation. For example when there was no browser competition. They did that with I.E. I.E. 4/4.5 had tons more features than I.E. 6.
And I agree on register dumps. That is useless for anyone except sometimes the programmer. I don't even care about the register dumps when diagnosing problems in my own code.
In the 1980's, if you had a computer at home you were probably "in the know" or financially bound to learn to use the computer properly.
I don't know what you mean by "in the know". Yes people knew more than they do today, perhaps. They tended to be genuine experts in one complex application, like WordPerfect/Wordstar, or Lotus 1-2-3. They understood different computers used different software but they generally was just as confused (if not moreso) than people today about RAM vs. ROM vs. OS vs. Applications. They weren't genuinely technical. And they were a broad demographic.
Your welder friend might be a good analogy to what people were like back then. Lets say he uses a CAD program, maybe even knows autolisp, and knows the computer does email but he doesn't really use it. That's kinda what they were like.
Then you are failing to follow the thread. The original poster's argument was that people in 2008 can't follow CLI instructions even if they are easier and less complex than the GUI instructions.
I do agree with you but again to use this example an error message like:
Microsoft Word had an error (de-refenced a null pointer).
Word will restart automatically and attempt to restore from where you left off.
If this is new persistent behavior and you recently have updated your operating system or changed any related software this is the most like cause, and you may want to contact the publishers of the various products.
If you have not changed anything and this problem is persisting it may the result of a virus of hardware failure. You should perform diagnostics or contact administrative support.
You could think of it another way:
Of all the workstation businesses Sun (under McNealy) was far and away the most successful and lasted the longest. It was the only one that is in any meaningful sense still in business. It is also probably had more effect on the server market than all the rest combined.
Finally during the 1990s the goal of Linux was to provide the features of Sun. Sun was the target, that is Sun was the trend setter.
You are a little out of data. Snow Leopard server has ZFS as the default. They have also indicated they intend to make this move on the client OS very soon which probably means 10.7.
Thank you. Good answer.
Yes Unix commands are less consistent having to do with evolution over decades and multiple sources rather than a single author over a year.
Its interesting you are actually arguing the opposite of many of the other people who are saying the problem is that people don't want to learn anything about computers.
I agree with what you wrote. The current versions of windows shells lack the kinds of feedback and help the older versions did. /? doesn't work as well as it used to since the assumption is you are using some sort of offline documentation.
The point is though that instructions given this way aren't impossible for end users to execute. I agree with you though that they require deeper knowledge to understand a "why did I do what I just did". If you assume people want that then its gets really bad.
As for apache conf. GUIs for something that complicated that actuallly exposed the complexity would be tremendously complicated. On the order of say Access or oracle's init configuration. And what seems to work the best for both those apps is allowing people to go from GUI -> text file and text file -> GUI. Back and forth since both configuration systems obscure too much for different reasons.
I agree with what you wrote regarding self discovery. And in fact it is one of the reasons I like GUIs with levels, even though that is considered very bad. I also agree that an old fashioned CLI doesn't provide the "how to get started" prompt that people often need.
Well fish (which is a new shell) goes in that direction:
"Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell
Type help for instructions on how to use fish"
with a nice menu driven help system.
Remember when you are talking about bash you are talking about something designed to look and act like the Thompson shell from 1971. They have gotten better. The goal of the 1960s-70s shells was often to minimize keystrokes and feedback at 110 baud or 300 baud. By 2400 baud that isn't even important anymore. Now that people are at 10 million baud.
Lets do your mp3 example and if you don't mind I'll use port since that's what I use on this system:
port --help : ok got the list of obvious commands
Hmmm I want to find an mp3 player
port search mp3 -- gives me 26 different options. Most aren't players so I do get the discovery options you mentioned. I like the looks of moc and madplay
port info moc
port info madplay -- I got detailed descriptions and moc sounds better
port install moc -- don't have permissions wonder why
man port -- oh I have to use sudo
sudo port install moc -- it worked!
Under a minute even with a few problems. Honestly that's less complex than what people do today with finding files on the internet trying to get information.....
__________
Now your example is a good one. Because someone using a GUI still has to figure out what their A drive is (which contains wiz.exe) and I assume has to know to use wiz.exe and not wiz.bat or wiz.com (since otherwise A:\wiz would have worked).
That is they actually are having to know the same information but.... it is obscured by additional information which is irrelevant.
And again the point of the grandparent was that doing exactly what you did 25 years ago is impossible for today's users. My point (I think phrased badly) was that if you are going to give people complex instructions beyond they are going to understand anyway the CLI is not a bad way to do it. And further that people can understand instructions of the same complexity they did then. If you look at the responses there really is a belief that users have become complete idiots and are unable to handle "type A:\wiz.exe" to play your game.
Good answer and good discussion.
Exactly correct. Which means these people can follow CLI instructions.
Which BTW is exactly what you find on Mac and Windows help sites where frequently they give CLI commands for the same reason.
I don't know if there is that much difference between who used them in the 1980s and today in terms of IQ. In the 1980s the big divides were age and economic class. It wasn't really education or intelligence.
Exactly! Give users at least some information so they can respond.
That's a good answer. I can buy the expectation of complexity has changed.
But the issue in the GP's post is that people couldn't / wouldn't. In other words in his opinion they would rather greater complexity if it means a GUI over a CLI set of instructions.
Those 123 users often knew:
format
copy
xcopy (and the difference with copy)
rename
move
2 stage printing
they quite often understood how an operating system loaded to understand what the difference between config.sys and autoexec.bat was
etc...
For your analogy to work you would need to believe that people couldn't handle a manual typewriter.
I assume you don't mean remix?
A fairly large percentage. Probably in the 15% range or so. It wasn't some small niche. It had a great deal to do with economic and age. Given the lower cost, greater importance and the fact that a whole generation has now passed....
Another fairly large percentage used either PCs or curses based systems at work, that gets you in the 35% range or so.
In the 1980s computer users didn't have "geek cred". The 70's users did. These were average people just trying to get work done.
Those were average people.
Yeah absolutely that was the "integrated office suite" $99 / $129 for the entire Microsoft Office. WordPefect eventually bundled with QuatroPro and Paradox for the same price but there was no integration.....
First off they can be adjudicated a delinquent. Also with respect to serious felonies they can often be tried as adults.
In the case the girls perpetrated the crime. They manufactured and distributed photographs of themselves.
Don't get me wrong this is stupid. It comes from a far too liberal definition of child porn for one thing.
WordPerfect wasn't a "real failure" when Word took over. It was just a disappointment, hadn't gotten much better in a while. Then there were a few minor problems.
WordPerfect for Windows came out 6 months after Word for Windows and it was still quite good. It probably could have beaten Word. But then the era of the integrated office suite hit and market share dove over the next few years.
There was no great failure just mild disappointment.
In reading your comments and the responses below I was thinking you might enjoy the most famous counterpoint:
But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the. same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our mind for a moment. And for good reason; --There is indeed rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful' but there is something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety .But it requires a strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to. the perception of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again ; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new .d different things; that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print; and that we may without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many other self-evident things are by false teaching. Nothing millions of variations in itself ; for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to infinity , while a circular arch is always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in culminating energy ; and their influence, wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic types being always first shown by greater irregularity and richer variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other recognizable outward sign of the Gothic mind. The variety of the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from mere love of change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty,-subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did. If they
Pick any of:
http://www.kdevelop.org/
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/index.html
http://www.eclipse.org/
Borland's
etc...
The "reason" Linux is going to give is the ability to respond to customization. For example 1024x600 screens (netbooks). Windows apps aren't designed to work well on that sort of odd shape or at that resolution. Linux apps because of X are generally designed to work well on just about any shape.