Often, functional and/or technical specs only go so far in describing how a particular program should be solved. The programmer has to supply the missing details and, in effect, make detailed design decisions.
That's the job of an architect, not a programmer. The architect creates the design, maybe even writes out function stubs, and the programmers fill them in. That's how software design is done at large companies, of course -- small startups consisting of 3 people can't afford this type of organization. But then, where are those startups now ?
There are many specialist areas where the problems one encounters are far from common, or simply beyond the run-of-the-mill programmer. We often work with programmers who specialise in other fields such as mathematics, ballistics, oil exploration models, financial models, etc.
I am sure there are innovations that simply have to be made in those fields -- but those are not CS innovations. And people who specialize in other fields are not programmers, per se -- they are physicists, mathematicians, etc. who also know some programming. These people are truly creative and intelligent, but the article was not about them.
Then... the programmer stumbles upon some flaw or bug in the plugin, and has to program his way around it. That requires real creativity. Every VB programmer should know what I am talking about here.
Wait... are you saying that messing with OCX controls and whatnot actually passes for creativity nowadays ? I think this is even a dimmer view of the situation than the view I was presenting. If the only thing left for programmers to do is work around other people's bugs, then creativity in programming is truly dead.
Obviously the users of such software may be researchers rather than programmers, but someone still has to program all of it first.
You are right, of course -- as long as there's math, we will need someone to program it. But I am not sure if Mathematica programmers count as developers or mathematicians... probably both. These guys are really a special case -- and, I suspect, a highly paid special case:-)
For as long as people are inventing new hardware to do new things, there will be a need for new software to drive it...
That is true, but nowadays, the solution to most problems is to throw more hardware at them. As the result, you get things like Windows CE, which requires a 486 processor to run. I expect that eventually, most microcontrollers will be scaled up to the point where standard RAD tools can be used on them. Actually, this has already happened for PDAs and those Java-enabled cellphones, among other things.
That covers everything from a smart spell-checking algorithm in a word processor through state of the art mathematical algorithms in a scientific calculation app to hardware control logic in instrument control and embedded software, and much more besides.
I would argue that spellchecking has been implemented many times already; most toolkits have a pre-made function that does it. And programs like Mathematica have reduced the need for people to program their own fast fourier transforms and such -- though, a person who uses Mathematica would probably be a researcher, anyway, not a regular developer. You are right about the embedded stuff (and I said as much in my original post); however, I think this will become less and less true as time passes, and embedded controllers become bigger and bigger.
I think you are actually proving my point. You say,
If you don't design and properly lay out how exactly what they should do, they can't do shit... Granted, you don't need them for every task and a lot of stuff sometimes is just routine... I believe design patterns are a perfect way to increase productivity for bad programmers and get them to function properly without messing up all the time.
As I said in my comment, programming has become very similar to construction. One very talented person -- the architect -- creates the design. Then, interchangeable drone-units can be used to implement it -- be it by hammering nails or by filling in function stubs using design patterns.
I agree with the article, and with you, when you say:
If you interrupt them with all kinds of managment stuff and tech support calls, they get confused and their productivy drops tremendously.
This is true of any workers, not just programmers. If they are attending morale-raising meetings, they are not working. However, this has little to do with creativity -- an assembly-line worker at some car manufacturing plant would suffer the same productivity drops due to meetings.
No my friend, creative programmers is exactly what is needed most of all in this business to stay afloat and be competetive and innovative.
But I contend that the business, or perhaps most of the business, does not desire to stay innovative. For example, take Photoshop. It hasn't changed much in the past couple years, and it probably won't. Everyone uses Photoshop, everyone knows how it works. It is the industry standard. Any innovation at this point will destroy Photoshop as we know it, because people will be forced to re-learn how to use it -- thus, opening a niche for competing products. Why would Adobe sabotage the monopoly they have worked so hard to build ?
However, much of the back-end stuff requires creativity. Writing a good UI requires creativity. Even designing good database schemas requires creativity.
Perhaps you are right -- after all, merely installing Oracle requires ingenuity and creativity. I am not sure what you mean by "back-end" though -- can you give an example ?
I agree that, in principle, a DB schema could require creativity; however, in practice, most of them are already created by automated tools nowadays -- at least in the RDBMS-backed Web site setting.
And if you think that VB programming is just about dragging widgets around a screen and dropping them on a form, you obviously don't know much about VB.
Actually, I used to code VB for a living (shame on me), back when it was VB4 or whatever. What are they up to now, 7 ? Anyway, all I needed to do was design some forms, double-click their properties, and add event handlers so that the "Ok" button closes the form. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that software is smart enough to do this now -- but the process is hardly creative. I am sure that some creative programs can be (and have been) written even in VB; my argument is simply that such programs are no longer really needed.
The Japanese and Chinese believe the way you do, which is why they have almost zero innovation.
Actually, unless I am mistaken, Japan leads US at least 3-5 years in technology, and has done so for a while. For example, can you name the top gaming consoles on the market today ? Or any other electronics for that matter ? How many people in the US use SMS as a primary means of communication ? I could give more examples, but you probably see my point. The Chinese... well... they are a totalitarian communist government (which has been desperately trying to improve lately). Any kind of innovation from them would be a surprise, for this reason.
That's what they said about physics back around the turn of the century, before Bohr and Planck and Einstein blew that load of horse hockey out of the water.
Read my comment again. I specifically stated that research is one area where real innovation and creativity are needed. But, in a commercial setting, most programming can be done by pluggable drone-units. It's the same thing with physics, actually -- physics research requires a lot of intelligence, but steel mills, fab plants, power substations etc. today are mostly automated.
The notion that "all the important discoveries" in CS have already been done would be funny if it didn't highlight the poster's ignorance so well.
I will re-iterate my point just in case you skipped over most of my comment. I was speaking about the same thing that the article concerned itself with: programming in a commercial setting. Programming research, like math research, will be with us forever -- but that's not the point.
you should stop treating them as pluggable units, each with similar capabilities.
I no longer believe this is true. Most programming tasks nowadays involve picking up some toolkit, an IDE, and an office chair, and then dragging icons around to combine parts of the toolkit into some working product. Visual Basic especially is a good example of this, but Java/.Net, plain old Windows GUI programming, Web scripting etc. are also way past the point where creativity matters. There are well-known solutions (f.ex. design patterns) for most problems, and CS students in today's colleges are only taught how to apply them. They are no more creative than assembly line workers.
That is not to say that our education system is evil (well, it is, but that's not the point) or that people today are stupid. The reason for this programmer pluggability is that the market evolved to the point where creativity simply is not neccessary, since most common problems have been solved and codified -- and there is no demand for uncommon tasks.
The only two places right now (IMO) where creativity and real intelligence are needed are the embedded coding and theoretical CS research. Theoretical CS research requires creativity because it's, well, research. Embedded design requires creativity because the resources are so limited, and a pre-designed solution simply will not work in your PIC16 microprocessor with 4Kb of RAM, and so you must be really tricky to make your program fit into the limited space and time constraints.
Outside of these two niches, programming has truly become similar to construction work: a few engineers design the building, and then 100 grunts carry bricks around and hammer nails until it's done.
I am curious as to how this technology works. The article mentions that it can project a beam of sound, or a sphere of sound, over 450 feet, with no loss in volume -- and it can do this virtually without moving parts. This sounds a bit too good to be true.
So, can someone explain, in high-school-physics terms, how this might be possible ?
A company named Mobileye seems to have a solution already. Well, a partial solution, perhaps. They have a car that nearly drives itself, and can recongnize obstacles, such as pedestrians, motorcycles, etc. As I understand, their car already has a mode where it will automatically follow the vehicle in front, without user intervention.
Actually, my argument is similar to his. The experiment above would actually work, to a certain extent. For example, if you just wrote the words "call me Ishmael" on the same space, you would probably be able to puzzle them out later. This is similar to how spread-spectrum stuff works: each character occupies a certain piece of the "spectrum" on the page, but you can write characters on top of each other and still be able to read them, because the characters have some empty spaces in them.
However, the "spectrum", i.e. the space on the page, is still limited. There is no way you can fit Moby Dick on there, even with ultra-smart character-recognition software.
Mr. Reed is abosultely correct: the radio spectrum is pretty much the same thing as the color spectrum. If there is no such thing as radio interference (in the non-physics sense of the word), then there shouldn't be color interference, either. Therefore, I propose the following experiment that everyone can do at home.
You will need:
A sheet of college-ruled paper
A green marker
A copy of Moby Dick
Open up the Moby Dick to the first page. Then, with the marker, start transcribing the text onto the sheet of paper -- "call me Ishmael" and all. When you run out of space, don't get more paper -- instead, just go back to the top of the sheet, and overwrite the text that's already there. When you are done with the entire Moby Dick, mail the sheet to Mr. Reed.
Since there is no such thing as color spectrum interference, Mr. Reed should be able to read the entire Moby Dick just from the one sheet of paper.
This revolutionary discovery will surely eliminate waste, and save our rainforests... If only the paper-making companies didn't want to keep it under wraps !
Who exactly is the target market for this thing ? My teenage sister has been using chat programs for a couple of years now (mostly AIM). Same thing goes for the young siblings of my friends. From what I can tell, modern teenagers are quite at home with using chat services, chatrooms, shoutcast, and of course that evil P2P filesharing that the media warned us about.
How is the MS app better than the de facto standard apps that exist today ? Perhaps it is aimed at younger children ?
Actually, I remember reading (a long time ago) about crop circles which may occur naturally. What happens is that an underground fungus starts growing in the middle of the field. It competes with the wheat on the field, leeching out the water and nutrients from the soil. Ergo, the wheat dies. On a nice, flat field, the fungus grows at equal speed in all directions, making... yes, a circle.
"Fairy rings" of mushrooms may also occur this way (mushrooms are the reproductive organs of the underground fungus).
Someone with a biology background, please correct me if I am wrong on the whole fungus thing.
Hillarious ! Mod parent up. I love their closing remarks:
If you're planking away on some dark night in the fields lads, and you begin to feel hot under the collar, it will be the microwaves. Get out of the field quickly, or fry with your boots on.
I honestly can't tell if they are being sarcastic, or if they really do expect the aliens to start zapping people with the microwaves. Oh my god... and the tin foil hats ! They would only make it worse ! Darn these aliens...
Genuine crop circles are not perfectly round but slightly elliptical (a hoax, requiring a fixed central rope, cannot achieve this adequately)
I say, bah ! Kids, try this at home:
Take two thumbtacks, a piece of string, a pencil, and a pad of paper. Stick the thumbtacks into the paper. Tie the string into a loop, then drop the loop onto the tacks so that they are both inside the loop. Now, put the pencil inside the loop as well. Move the pencil outward so that the loop is stretched tightly into a triangle. Now, keeping the string tight, move the pencil around the thumbtacks, and draw with it... Voila, you got an ellipse. And you didn't even need GPS.
If they can miss a basic thing like ellipses, which they should have learned in Algebra 2, I wonder how reliable the rest of their site is...
"As the quality of the files on the free P2P services go down, it makes the offerings from the legitimate online services, like Pressplay and MusicNet, that much more attractive" -- Susan Kevorkian, a consumer technologies analyst at IDC.
Nice approach. Apparently it's much easier to wreck the competition than to create a better service. Imagine if everyone did that: we'd see McDonalds jack-booted thugs take apart the neighbourhood Burger King, and Mitsubishi cars exploding on the freeway because of timebombs introduced by the Toyota hit squad. As usual, when the corporations fight, the consumer loses.
Actually, Torment is a lot less linear than other games. I finished it twice and got very different events. Probably because I was good one time, evil the other time.
Isn't it legal for them to do it now ? I seem to recall reading something about a bill which allows RIAA to hack any network for the purposes of rooting out evil pirates (arrrrr). Has this bill become law ?
I watched a few episodes of Taken. My impression was that this movie was not created by movie producers; it was created by marketers. In a cold, calm, efficient manner, it hits every single UFOlogy cliche that's out there, plus a few New Age ones. Greys ? Check. Shiny flying saucers ? Check. Government cover-up ? Check. Humans falling in love with aliens ? Check. Weird human/alien hybrid kids with psychic powers ? Check. Pools of white radiant light ? Check. I could go on but I won't, in the interests of saving space. The series does not have a plot, per se -- it's just a linear progression from one cliche to another.
Obviosly, most UFO-minded people will like at least one of those cliches; several people will like more than one. This means high ratings, high merchandising potential, and rich sequel opportunities. So what if the series is about as fresh and original as IRS tax forms ? It sells, and that's all that matters.
"The big idea here is that if the robots have found a way to violate the laws, there is nothing to stop them from taking over, because the human race is so dependent on robots and automation," said 20th Century Fox film president Hutch Parker.
What ? Have these people actually read the book ?
I, Robot, as far as I understand (and I admit I am no arts major), is at its core a philosophical treatise. It examines the laws that hold our society together, and the properties that separate us from machines (if any). For example, in one of my favorite stories an incognito robot is running for office as a Governor. It turns out that it is impossible to prove that the robot is, in fact, a robot. On one hand, he values his privacy like any other being, and will not submit to invasive scans. On the other hand, his behavior, which is limited by the Laws of Robotics, is the same as the behavior expected of any decent human being, especially a good public official -- and they are in such short supply nowdays. In the end, he gets elected, because he is really the best man for the job.
So, the movie is going to feature evil robots taking over mankind ? I am not going to pay money to watch some Hollywood loser milk Asimov's name for all it's worth.
I guess I don't use my PDA to its fullest potential. I use the calendar, address book, memo pad (I store URLs, my favorite quotes, characters sheets there), a dice-rolling program (for tabletop RPGs), and a few games. Oh, and the calculator of course.
Now, I probably wouldn't use all the of the organizing apps if I had good handwriting and rudimentary math skills... But I don't, so the PDA is really useful for me.
Games. I play them a lot, and the PS2 just isn't enough.
Hardware support. Needed for games, mostly. Also needed for modems, digital cameras, PDAs, printers, etc.
Nice-looking fonts. I browse the Web a lot, seeing as I do web programming for a living. I need fonts that don't make my eyes bleed.
Simplicity of configuration. This includes installing programs and configuring their settings. A clean GUI is the only way to do this.
Stability. If it crashes, what's the point ? Note that applications need to be as stable as the kernel.
Security. If crackers get to use it instead of me, what's the point ?
Surprisingly enough, Windows (2000 or XP) actually fullfills these requirements much better than Linux. It fullfills the "SSH" and "Shell" requirements through Cygwin, and the "Security" requirement through ZoneAlarm and my router (it's not 100% safe but it's reasonable). All other requirements Windows supports natively; especially, the "GUI" and "Fonts" requirements. The "Configuration" requirement barely passes, but even regedit is better than "wtf is this config file and where am I supposed to put it".
By contrast, Linux fails most of the requirements miserably, except for "Shell", "Security", and "SSH"; "Stability" is ok but not as good as WinXP (this came as a major surprise to me). I realize that I am just a dumb windows luser and if I do steps X, Y and Z then I can get fast GUI with antialiased fonts, but the failure of the "Configuration" requirement prevents me from really doing anything about it.
Note that I am approaching Linux as a desktop user, not as a server admin or a computer hobbyist (aka hacker). Linux (or BSD, I am not about to start that war again) is perfect for admins because of all the remote administration and security features, not to mention Apache/Oracle/etc. It's perfect for hobbyists because it's just so complex and cool. I occasionally assume the admin/hobbyist personality, but most of the time I just want to get work done and/or play some games.
Also note that I don't care about ethical/philosophical issues as much. However, when MS shoves Palladium down my throat, Windows will fail the Multimedia/Games requirement, and probably several others, which may give Linux the edge it needs to win me over.
Much of the stuff he says is true. However, I think the author gets carried away when he declares the "Save" and "Exit" commands as "Cruft!".
These commands are, IMO, actually examples of good interface design. The (unwritten) rule these commands are implementing is,
A program should not try to outsmart the user
Let's say the "Save" command was automatic. Where are the files saved ? Under what name ? How often ? What if I made a mistake, and want to restore the old file -- is it possible ? How far back can I go ? Infinitely back ? What if I don't have infinite disk space ? Etc. etc. Instead of making a program that would try to solve these questions for all people and all applications at once, I can simply tell the user, "look, when you want to permanently persist your document, hit Save". This is a lot better in the long run than a program that would overwrite your files every so often because it feels like it.
Similarly, the "Quit" command is useful. Without it, applications would just pile up on the screen and in RAM. When I am done with writing my letter, and want to play some Warcraft 3, I want to close MS Word and open WC3. It's very natural; just as when I am done working and want to go to the beach, I take off my suit and put on swimming trunks. If I could not quit any programs, they would pile up like layers upon layers of dirty clothes -- media players, web browsers, p2p programs, text editors, word processors, compilers, virtual machines, graphics editors... and that's just what I use before breakfast ! Yes, it would be nice if we had infinite CPU, RAM, disk space and screen space, but we don't, so the "Quit" command is the next best thing.
Note that, ironically, on single-threaded OSs, such as PalmOS, the Quit command is actually not neccessary. There, it makes a lot more sense to just save the state of the current program when you want to run something else, then restore the state when you reactivate the program. This only works because you can run one program at a time, and that's it, so there's no room for confusion.
Contrast the ease of use of the "Save" and "Quit" commands to other commands which have been implemented as automatic agents, just as the article suggests. MS Word's "auto-correct" (more like auto-confuse), Visual Studio's auto-complete (it knows best what function you want to call) and that damn paperclip all come to mind. My computer is not psychic (yet); it cannot sense what I want to do. If it tries to predict what I want to do ahead of time, it will fail and mess up.
Hear hear. The only way I can ever stand to use Linux at all is to ssh into it from Windows. While emacs looks the same pretty much everywhere, Web browsing is really annoying without proper fonts. And seeing as I program websites for a living, I have to browse a lot...
Did anyone else notice the redirect that they set up on the "review" link ? I like it. Maybe Slashdot _should_ cache the articles just like the irate webmasters say...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the article, and with you, when you say:
This is true of any workers, not just programmers. If they are attending morale-raising meetings, they are not working. However, this has little to do with creativity -- an assembly-line worker at some car manufacturing plant would suffer the same productivity drops due to meetings. But I contend that the business, or perhaps most of the business, does not desire to stay innovative. For example, take Photoshop. It hasn't changed much in the past couple years, and it probably won't. Everyone uses Photoshop, everyone knows how it works. It is the industry standard. Any innovation at this point will destroy Photoshop as we know it, because people will be forced to re-learn how to use it -- thus, opening a niche for competing products. Why would Adobe sabotage the monopoly they have worked so hard to build ?I agree that, in principle, a DB schema could require creativity; however, in practice, most of them are already created by automated tools nowadays -- at least in the RDBMS-backed Web site setting.
That is not to say that our education system is evil (well, it is, but that's not the point) or that people today are stupid. The reason for this programmer pluggability is that the market evolved to the point where creativity simply is not neccessary, since most common problems have been solved and codified -- and there is no demand for uncommon tasks.
The only two places right now (IMO) where creativity and real intelligence are needed are the embedded coding and theoretical CS research. Theoretical CS research requires creativity because it's, well, research. Embedded design requires creativity because the resources are so limited, and a pre-designed solution simply will not work in your PIC16 microprocessor with 4Kb of RAM, and so you must be really tricky to make your program fit into the limited space and time constraints.
Outside of these two niches, programming has truly become similar to construction work: a few engineers design the building, and then 100 grunts carry bricks around and hammer nails until it's done.
So, can someone explain, in high-school-physics terms, how this might be possible ?
A company named Mobileye seems to have a solution already. Well, a partial solution, perhaps. They have a car that nearly drives itself, and can recongnize obstacles, such as pedestrians, motorcycles, etc. As I understand, their car already has a mode where it will automatically follow the vehicle in front, without user intervention.
However, the "spectrum", i.e. the space on the page, is still limited. There is no way you can fit Moby Dick on there, even with ultra-smart character-recognition software.
You will need:
- A sheet of college-ruled paper
- A green marker
- A copy of Moby Dick
Open up the Moby Dick to the first page. Then, with the marker, start transcribing the text onto the sheet of paper -- "call me Ishmael" and all. When you run out of space, don't get more paper -- instead, just go back to the top of the sheet, and overwrite the text that's already there. When you are done with the entire Moby Dick, mail the sheet to Mr. Reed.Since there is no such thing as color spectrum interference, Mr. Reed should be able to read the entire Moby Dick just from the one sheet of paper.
This revolutionary discovery will surely eliminate waste, and save our rainforests... If only the paper-making companies didn't want to keep it under wraps !
How is the MS app better than the de facto standard apps that exist today ? Perhaps it is aimed at younger children ?
"Fairy rings" of mushrooms may also occur this way (mushrooms are the reproductive organs of the underground fungus).
Someone with a biology background, please correct me if I am wrong on the whole fungus thing.
Take two thumbtacks, a piece of string, a pencil, and a pad of paper. Stick the thumbtacks into the paper. Tie the string into a loop, then drop the loop onto the tacks so that they are both inside the loop. Now, put the pencil inside the loop as well. Move the pencil outward so that the loop is stretched tightly into a triangle. Now, keeping the string tight, move the pencil around the thumbtacks, and draw with it... Voila, you got an ellipse. And you didn't even need GPS.
If they can miss a basic thing like ellipses, which they should have learned in Algebra 2, I wonder how reliable the rest of their site is...
Actually, Torment is a lot less linear than other games. I finished it twice and got very different events. Probably because I was good one time, evil the other time.
Isn't it legal for them to do it now ? I seem to recall reading something about a bill which allows RIAA to hack any network for the purposes of rooting out evil pirates (arrrrr). Has this bill become law ?
Obviosly, most UFO-minded people will like at least one of those cliches; several people will like more than one. This means high ratings, high merchandising potential, and rich sequel opportunities. So what if the series is about as fresh and original as IRS tax forms ? It sells, and that's all that matters.
I, Robot, as far as I understand (and I admit I am no arts major), is at its core a philosophical treatise. It examines the laws that hold our society together, and the properties that separate us from machines (if any). For example, in one of my favorite stories an incognito robot is running for office as a Governor. It turns out that it is impossible to prove that the robot is, in fact, a robot. On one hand, he values his privacy like any other being, and will not submit to invasive scans. On the other hand, his behavior, which is limited by the Laws of Robotics, is the same as the behavior expected of any decent human being, especially a good public official -- and they are in such short supply nowdays. In the end, he gets elected, because he is really the best man for the job.
So, the movie is going to feature evil robots taking over mankind ? I am not going to pay money to watch some Hollywood loser milk Asimov's name for all it's worth.
Now, I probably wouldn't use all the of the organizing apps if I had good handwriting and rudimentary math skills... But I don't, so the PDA is really useful for me.
Surprisingly enough, Windows (2000 or XP) actually fullfills these requirements much better than Linux. It fullfills the "SSH" and "Shell" requirements through Cygwin, and the "Security" requirement through ZoneAlarm and my router (it's not 100% safe but it's reasonable). All other requirements Windows supports natively; especially, the "GUI" and "Fonts" requirements. The "Configuration" requirement barely passes, but even regedit is better than "wtf is this config file and where am I supposed to put it".
By contrast, Linux fails most of the requirements miserably, except for "Shell", "Security", and "SSH"; "Stability" is ok but not as good as WinXP (this came as a major surprise to me). I realize that I am just a dumb windows luser and if I do steps X, Y and Z then I can get fast GUI with antialiased fonts, but the failure of the "Configuration" requirement prevents me from really doing anything about it.
Note that I am approaching Linux as a desktop user, not as a server admin or a computer hobbyist (aka hacker). Linux (or BSD, I am not about to start that war again) is perfect for admins because of all the remote administration and security features, not to mention Apache/Oracle/etc. It's perfect for hobbyists because it's just so complex and cool. I occasionally assume the admin/hobbyist personality, but most of the time I just want to get work done and/or play some games.
Also note that I don't care about ethical/philosophical issues as much. However, when MS shoves Palladium down my throat, Windows will fail the Multimedia/Games requirement, and probably several others, which may give Linux the edge it needs to win me over.
These commands are, IMO, actually examples of good interface design. The (unwritten) rule these commands are implementing is,
Let's say the "Save" command was automatic. Where are the files saved ? Under what name ? How often ? What if I made a mistake, and want to restore the old file -- is it possible ? How far back can I go ? Infinitely back ? What if I don't have infinite disk space ? Etc. etc. Instead of making a program that would try to solve these questions for all people and all applications at once, I can simply tell the user, "look, when you want to permanently persist your document, hit Save". This is a lot better in the long run than a program that would overwrite your files every so often because it feels like it.Similarly, the "Quit" command is useful. Without it, applications would just pile up on the screen and in RAM. When I am done with writing my letter, and want to play some Warcraft 3, I want to close MS Word and open WC3. It's very natural; just as when I am done working and want to go to the beach, I take off my suit and put on swimming trunks. If I could not quit any programs, they would pile up like layers upon layers of dirty clothes -- media players, web browsers, p2p programs, text editors, word processors, compilers, virtual machines, graphics editors... and that's just what I use before breakfast ! Yes, it would be nice if we had infinite CPU, RAM, disk space and screen space, but we don't, so the "Quit" command is the next best thing.
Note that, ironically, on single-threaded OSs, such as PalmOS, the Quit command is actually not neccessary. There, it makes a lot more sense to just save the state of the current program when you want to run something else, then restore the state when you reactivate the program. This only works because you can run one program at a time, and that's it, so there's no room for confusion.
Contrast the ease of use of the "Save" and "Quit" commands to other commands which have been implemented as automatic agents, just as the article suggests. MS Word's "auto-correct" (more like auto-confuse), Visual Studio's auto-complete (it knows best what function you want to call) and that damn paperclip all come to mind. My computer is not psychic (yet); it cannot sense what I want to do. If it tries to predict what I want to do ahead of time, it will fail and mess up.
Hear hear. The only way I can ever stand to use Linux at all is to ssh into it from Windows. While emacs looks the same pretty much everywhere, Web browsing is really annoying without proper fonts. And seeing as I program websites for a living, I have to browse a lot...
Did anyone else notice the redirect that they set up on the "review" link ? I like it. Maybe Slashdot _should_ cache the articles just like the irate webmasters say...