I've currently got the 'Actionscript 2 Garage' book on my safari bookshelf, and it seems to suffer from the same lack of focus.
Its tone of voice is intended to suggest matter-of-factness (is that a word?) but in fact the book has lots of gaps and covers topics very unevenly. There is no information there that isn't available in other books, only the style is (slightly) different. It does indeed seem to aim for the 'guys working in web design who think O'reilly books are boring' demographic.
A big problem with buzzwords is that they annihilate any legitimate use of the word in question. I think it was General Electric's CEO who started the 'Solution' thing by stating that GE does not manufacture electric drills, but manufactures solutions to create holes. This has become a cliché, but it's true nonetheless. It actually means that companies should focus on problems that need to be solved instead of creating products just because they can.
Dumb people then take that and turn everything into a 'solution' without thinking about the problems to be solved.
I am completely in favour of explaining things in non-technical terminology as much as possible. Making people understand stuff is important, I think. Some people don't want to be taught, however, and others don't know how to simplify. It has no use explaining to a car buyer how ingenious the expensive new fuel pump is if you leave out the facts that it saves fuel, costs less in maintenance and is therefore cheaper in the long run.
Some engineers tend to forget that and focus on the technicalities of a product.
To drift this even further off topic: Why does everybody think that nazis were all about following the rules exactly and to the letter? I say this, because they weren't. Germans are pretty punctual, but the nazis were not. In that respect, they were quite un-German. Hitler preferred not to give written orders and instead relied on his minions to just instinctively do what was desired. If they didn't, well, there was always the Eastern Front.
The Third Reich was also an elaborate mishmash of oranisations with overlapping jurisdictions all competing with eachother for the Führer's favour (You had the Wehrmacht, SS, SA, SicherheitsDienst, Gestapo, Abwehr, etc.).
So, please, don't use the word 'nazi' when you want to express extreme punctuality, it gives too much credit where it's not due.
There's a cultural one too. Depending on the problem, users will expect empathy from the other side. With cultural differences, that gets harder. As a European, I've had to call a few US helpdesks in the past, and it's just not the same. You'd expect it to be ok, but i guess Americans just have a different method of social interaction than us Europeans.
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I've currently got the 'Actionscript 2 Garage' book on my safari bookshelf, and it seems to suffer from the same lack of focus. Its tone of voice is intended to suggest matter-of-factness (is that a word?) but in fact the book has lots of gaps and covers topics very unevenly. There is no information there that isn't available in other books, only the style is (slightly) different. It does indeed seem to aim for the 'guys working in web design who think O'reilly books are boring' demographic.
A big problem with buzzwords is that they annihilate any legitimate use of the word in question. I think it was General Electric's CEO who started the 'Solution' thing by stating that GE does not manufacture electric drills, but manufactures solutions to create holes. This has become a cliché, but it's true nonetheless. It actually means that companies should focus on problems that need to be solved instead of creating products just because they can. Dumb people then take that and turn everything into a 'solution' without thinking about the problems to be solved. I am completely in favour of explaining things in non-technical terminology as much as possible. Making people understand stuff is important, I think. Some people don't want to be taught, however, and others don't know how to simplify. It has no use explaining to a car buyer how ingenious the expensive new fuel pump is if you leave out the facts that it saves fuel, costs less in maintenance and is therefore cheaper in the long run. Some engineers tend to forget that and focus on the technicalities of a product.
To drift this even further off topic: Why does everybody think that nazis were all about following the rules exactly and to the letter? I say this, because they weren't. Germans are pretty punctual, but the nazis were not. In that respect, they were quite un-German. Hitler preferred not to give written orders and instead relied on his minions to just instinctively do what was desired. If they didn't, well, there was always the Eastern Front. The Third Reich was also an elaborate mishmash of oranisations with overlapping jurisdictions all competing with eachother for the Führer's favour (You had the Wehrmacht, SS, SA, SicherheitsDienst, Gestapo, Abwehr, etc.). So, please, don't use the word 'nazi' when you want to express extreme punctuality, it gives too much credit where it's not due.
There's a cultural one too. Depending on the problem, users will expect empathy from the other side. With cultural differences, that gets harder. As a European, I've had to call a few US helpdesks in the past, and it's just not the same. You'd expect it to be ok, but i guess Americans just have a different method of social interaction than us Europeans.