I agree that requiring the user to read a README file, in general, is bad practice. My point is that, for complex tasks, it's impossible to avoid a learning curve.
I'll use a non-computer example: Think about the car. Practically all cars are intuitive; yet at some time you need to go through the effort of learning to drive. The same applies to cooking; it's very easy to boil an egg or grill a steak, but at some point you need to go through the effort of learning how to use a stove or grill.
Going back to Maple: When I was in college, my entire freshman class used to curse Maple out for being hideously difficult to use. It was so difficult that I participated in a 6-month project that compared its usability to other mathmatics programs. The result was that we determined that the "beginner-friendly" alternatives were significantly less powerful. (At the time, Maple primarily consisted of a command-line interface that was similar to Pascal.)
The same can be said for Visual Studio. On a daily basis I use important features that can only be learned by reading a manual. Yet, Visual Studio is a good example of making an effort to reduce the need to read a manual:
Instead of spending a lot of time leafing through API specs, I can use Intellisence and auto-completion.
Instead of reading a document for compiler switches, I can configure compiler settings in an API.
Again, returning to the point, one must find a good balance between intutiveness and usability. A non-computer example is the automatic transmission vs. manual debate, the automatic is intuitive, but the manual performs better. Another example is the Windows command shell compared to the Bash shell; Bash is significantly harder, but more powerful then the Windows shell.
Perhaps it's better to say that the "effort to learn" a program must be appropriate to the intended use of a program; a README file is a sign that the "effor to learn" is too high.
Almost everything you say applies to APIs as well as GUIs. I can't stand APIs that don't let me directly manipulate objects or make it very difficult to debug my "user errors".
I disagree with "Don't assume user expertise: always assume your user knows NOTHING about computers". Are you going to explain how to use a mouse and keyboard in every program? I think it's fair to say that it's better to spend some time picking a minimum knowledge level.
Scenario-based design is over-rated. It's given me far too many programs that try to force me to do some imaginary task that I don't want to do! (Think of Word's infamous paper clip.) IMO, wizards serve two purposes: They help teach a user how to use a complex program, and they act as shortcuts for tasks that would take longer using a fat cliet. The way that Microsoft embedded.zip file handling in the shell is a great example of scenario-based design. Word's auto-formmating is a horrible example, because it never gets it right.
I find the statement "Users won't read, and shouldn't have to" is misleading. It's true for simple web applications and utilities. There are applications where a learning curve is worth the hassle. Maple is an incredibly powerful mathematics program; yet it is only powerful because its interface has a steep learning curve. On the far extreem, it's impossible to use Visual Studio without prior knowledge of a programming language. Trying to go 100% intuitive GUI also leads to repetative scenarios that can't be automated. For example, Surcode's DTS CD encoder can't be called from the command-line, thus making it difficult to automate.
If the studios are smart, they'll only use ICT on media that isn't for mass consumption. Specifically, piracy happens on preview disks that the general public doesn't get. By only using ICT on these disks, (and not giving the general public an incentive to break it,) the studios make it very difficult to pirate "screener" disks.
For your needs, probably not... If the power goes out, your internet will probably go out as well. At best, using a laptop as a server will just mean that it lasts longer during a power outage.
I tried Napster's $10 dollar a month program two years ago. It was pretty cool, except that the lossy compression they use is so bad it gave me a headache. Needless to say, I decided that I was better off just buying CDs.
Personally, I don't think music downloads will be able to become mainstream until they become acceptable to audiophiles who are willing to spend serious money. In order for this to happen, music downloads have to exceed the quality of CD.
They should learn to program as close to the raw as possible
That means hand-typing hex into Debug, which is hardly an appropriate task for an intro class. Why not crack open the hard drive and write the bits by hand?
Sarcasm aside: When I first learned C in high school, the instructor explained what the preprocessor and compiler did on the first day. We never looked back afterwards. For those of us who needed to learn how to use a compiler from the command-line, we were able to figure it out. Spending time in notepad or hand-tuning switches would have been a waste for 90% of the class.
You can say the same about writing a program by hand-coding hex into a binary file. In college, we kept such activites out of the intro classes for good reasons.
What many of the replies in this thread fail to realize is that intro CS classes often have non-CS students, who are there for various reasons. The EE might some day need to write embedded code. The MIS might someday (heaven forbid!) be managing a software project, and thus needs a general exposure to programming.
My company routinely has non-CS people write programs that execute in a self-contained shell. Such programming requires no use of any compiler.
Make really is only used in the Unix world, where it's not the only way to build a project. Teaching it in an intro class with a wide audience is just going to waste time.
No, students should not: Not using the IDE shows students everything that goes on "under the hood" during compilation.
Yes, students should: Part of teaching programming is showing students how to best use all tools at their disposal. IDEs have some valuable features that are vital to professional programmers.
IMO, the best time to go without the IDE is around the same time that you teach assembly. The non-IDE experience is mainly valuable to students who are going to be professional programmers. For into-type classes where there will most likely be non-major students, keeping them in the IDE will help them be more effective if/when they ever need to program in the future. Likewise, once you reach very advanced CS classes, your students will have better things to worry about then command-line switches, and thus will be able to make good use of the IDE's features.
I agree with what you say. I currently have Comcast's Motorolla DVR, yet whenever I see a commerical with good-looking people dancing around, I watch them. My favorites are the Old Navy and Coke Zero commericials. They work, too. Last night I spent $75 at Old Navy and I just drank a Coke Zero.
What I think would work is if Tivo kept advertising management simple:
The commerical skip button should skip to the exact frame at the end of the commerical.
Advertisers should know that all comsumers will see the first 1/2 second of an ad.
Tivo should add a "learn more" button to the remote, which will allow the user to get more information if the commerical is interesting.
As more video moves to the internet, and it becomes easier to view TV on a PC, the two devices will converge. When your 13" TV in your kitchen breaks down, why not replace it with an iMac?
When a program like Skype becomes popular for video-calls, we'll see a lot of mini-PCs placed where you would put a traditional phone. After all, video-calls are going to be very difficult to do on a cell phone. A 5" iMac with a bundled headset would be perfect!
I only want to carry around one portable computing device. It doesn't have to be powerful, but I'd like it to hold a sizeable portion of my music library, take good pictures and videos, allow me to make free VOIP calls, and have decent web abilities.
As people start to own more "computing devices", demand for "device neutral information" will become common. If I have 300 gigs of high-quality music in my living room, I want it magically sychronized with my car, office computer, and super-cellphone. Likewise, I'd like my photos, word documents, ect, to be magically synchronized to all of my computing devices. Whoever does this first can destroy Microsoft.
I don't think the keyboard/monitor combo or the large screen & couch combo will ever go away. We will always work in offices and watch TV. How we organize the information that we use them for is what will change.
Most people would go `What the hell is this crap? Why would I care? Am I expected to email a bunch of sites every day and tell them to `construct` their site differently?` Then they'd ask their techy friends/support how to disable the message. Then that would be that. It would be about as useful and welcome to them as "error 94" or whatever.
Exactly! But if you were paying someone to design a web site and it displayed such an error, what would you do? If you were a CEO and your company displayed such an error, what would you do? Those are the people who the error message targets.
On a more serious note, the only way to solve the problem is to have browsers shame non-complient pages. Specifically, if IE7 displayed a dialog that said, "This web site is constructed improperly and might not work as expected" every time it hit an invalid page, things would change VERY FAST.
The thing about the great extinction is that, in every case, a species survives to make its own branch in the evolutionary tree. While I am a firm believer in space colonization, I have no doubt that humans are smart enough to survive a mass extinction without space travel.
The way that children learn words is by people saying the word and pointing to it. My guess is lots of commercials where Ronand McDonald points to a big golden "M" and says "McDonalds".
Then again, I don't watch much children's television. It's incredibly easy to influence young children. I bought my nephew some He-Man DVDs for Christmas, and now his favorite toys at Grandma's are my old He-Man toys from the 80s.
You're right about "Coke Zero is the older recipe with artificial sweetners". As far as Coke Light is concerned, you can find it in the states. It has both sugar and asparitmitane. (sp?) (Although you might be right about it being different in Europe, as I've never been there.)
IMO, a cold Coke Zero tastes more like corn-syrup based regular Coke, and a cold Diet Coke with Splenda tastes more like a cane sugar-based regular Coke. Personally, I'm surprised there's such a push for Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke with Spleda because asparitmitane doesn't last in a fountain, but Splenda does.
BTW, a lot of people don't realize it, but Diet Coke out of the fountain tastes very different then Diet Coke from a can/bottle. When it's in the fountain, it's sweetened with a saccarine/asparimitane mix. (This is because asparimitane is rather unstable.) Some people say it tastes more like Tab. If you've only had Diet Coke from the fountain, you might be surprised to learn that it tastes very good from the can and bottle.
The best thing you can do is keep your skills up-to-date.
It also doesn't hurt to have a hobby that you can turn into a job. An old manager of mine used to do woodworking as a hobby. When he got laid off from a 200k/year job, he decided to retire from tech and be a professional woodworker. Needless to say, he's quite happy.
By law, public corporations must do what is in the best interests of their stockholders. By having a significant amount of their shareholders be their customers, and a significant number of their customers be their shareholders, it gives them an interesting position to work from. Specifically, I choose Vonage because it's cheap. Instead of raising their rates, they allow me to be a part owner of their system. This is good for me as a stockholder because I get a tangible "perk" of a cheap phone. As a customer, this is good because, by law, the company has to work for the best interests of the stockholder, who also happens to be me.
Perhaps blurring the lines between stockholder and customer is their intention? If so, I hope it works out well.
Believe it or not, I'd actually consider their system if, and only if, they also mailed me a normal DVD... Then again, even at BitTorrent speeds, I might as well drive to BestBuy just so I don't have to jump through their DRM hoops.
Most businesses that I know of use an ingenious system. Each computer has a device that's about 18 inches long and 8 inches wide. It has a series of buttons on it, and each button corresponds with a letter. When the user wants to write something that can be interpreted by the compuer, he or she just pushes a button for each letter.
Such devices are becoming quite popular because they're faster then handwriting! Hopefully we'll eventually find one in every office and home!
Viewpoint is Malware / unwanted. Period. It's Malware / unwanted because I, the consumer, say I don't want it.
Why do I not want it? Over a year ago it started popping up dialogs on my screen. Once it automatically downloaded a toolbar on to my computer. When it did that, it displayed a liscense agreement that I could not cancel.
Fortunatly, I was able to get rid of the thing for good by switching to GAIM.
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I'll use a non-computer example: Think about the car. Practically all cars are intuitive; yet at some time you need to go through the effort of learning to drive. The same applies to cooking; it's very easy to boil an egg or grill a steak, but at some point you need to go through the effort of learning how to use a stove or grill.
Going back to Maple: When I was in college, my entire freshman class used to curse Maple out for being hideously difficult to use. It was so difficult that I participated in a 6-month project that compared its usability to other mathmatics programs. The result was that we determined that the "beginner-friendly" alternatives were significantly less powerful. (At the time, Maple primarily consisted of a command-line interface that was similar to Pascal.)
The same can be said for Visual Studio. On a daily basis I use important features that can only be learned by reading a manual. Yet, Visual Studio is a good example of making an effort to reduce the need to read a manual:
Again, returning to the point, one must find a good balance between intutiveness and usability. A non-computer example is the automatic transmission vs. manual debate, the automatic is intuitive, but the manual performs better. Another example is the Windows command shell compared to the Bash shell; Bash is significantly harder, but more powerful then the Windows shell.
Perhaps it's better to say that the "effort to learn" a program must be appropriate to the intended use of a program; a README file is a sign that the "effor to learn" is too high.
Nothing's stopping you from gluing an LCD to the outside of a standard LCD case!
If the studios are smart, they'll only use ICT on media that isn't for mass consumption. Specifically, piracy happens on preview disks that the general public doesn't get. By only using ICT on these disks, (and not giving the general public an incentive to break it,) the studios make it very difficult to pirate "screener" disks.
For your needs, probably not... If the power goes out, your internet will probably go out as well. At best, using a laptop as a server will just mean that it lasts longer during a power outage.
Personally, I don't think music downloads will be able to become mainstream until they become acceptable to audiophiles who are willing to spend serious money. In order for this to happen, music downloads have to exceed the quality of CD.
That means hand-typing hex into Debug, which is hardly an appropriate task for an intro class. Why not crack open the hard drive and write the bits by hand?
Sarcasm aside: When I first learned C in high school, the instructor explained what the preprocessor and compiler did on the first day. We never looked back afterwards. For those of us who needed to learn how to use a compiler from the command-line, we were able to figure it out. Spending time in notepad or hand-tuning switches would have been a waste for 90% of the class.
What many of the replies in this thread fail to realize is that intro CS classes often have non-CS students, who are there for various reasons. The EE might some day need to write embedded code. The MIS might someday (heaven forbid!) be managing a software project, and thus needs a general exposure to programming.
My company routinely has non-CS people write programs that execute in a self-contained shell. Such programming requires no use of any compiler.
Make really is only used in the Unix world, where it's not the only way to build a project. Teaching it in an intro class with a wide audience is just going to waste time.
Yes, students should: Part of teaching programming is showing students how to best use all tools at their disposal. IDEs have some valuable features that are vital to professional programmers.
IMO, the best time to go without the IDE is around the same time that you teach assembly. The non-IDE experience is mainly valuable to students who are going to be professional programmers. For into-type classes where there will most likely be non-major students, keeping them in the IDE will help them be more effective if/when they ever need to program in the future. Likewise, once you reach very advanced CS classes, your students will have better things to worry about then command-line switches, and thus will be able to make good use of the IDE's features.
Again, the above statements are just my opinion.
What I think would work is if Tivo kept advertising management simple:
... There's one small problem. In the real word, if a developer is having trouble with XHTML, (s)he'll just switch back to invalid HTML.
I get the impression that it's "imported" from Mexico. Where I've seen it, it's in a glass bottle, which is hard to find from American "bottlers".
On a more serious note, the only way to solve the problem is to have browsers shame non-complient pages. Specifically, if IE7 displayed a dialog that said, "This web site is constructed improperly and might not work as expected" every time it hit an invalid page, things would change VERY FAST.
The thing about the great extinction is that, in every case, a species survives to make its own branch in the evolutionary tree. While I am a firm believer in space colonization, I have no doubt that humans are smart enough to survive a mass extinction without space travel.
Then again, I don't watch much children's television. It's incredibly easy to influence young children. I bought my nephew some He-Man DVDs for Christmas, and now his favorite toys at Grandma's are my old He-Man toys from the 80s.
You're right about "Coke Zero is the older recipe with artificial sweetners". As far as Coke Light is concerned, you can find it in the states. It has both sugar and asparitmitane. (sp?) (Although you might be right about it being different in Europe, as I've never been there.)
IMO, a cold Coke Zero tastes more like corn-syrup based regular Coke, and a cold Diet Coke with Splenda tastes more like a cane sugar-based regular Coke. Personally, I'm surprised there's such a push for Coke Zero instead of Diet Coke with Spleda because asparitmitane doesn't last in a fountain, but Splenda does.
BTW, a lot of people don't realize it, but Diet Coke out of the fountain tastes very different then Diet Coke from a can/bottle. When it's in the fountain, it's sweetened with a saccarine/asparimitane mix. (This is because asparimitane is rather unstable.) Some people say it tastes more like Tab. If you've only had Diet Coke from the fountain, you might be surprised to learn that it tastes very good from the can and bottle.
It also doesn't hurt to have a hobby that you can turn into a job. An old manager of mine used to do woodworking as a hobby. When he got laid off from a 200k/year job, he decided to retire from tech and be a professional woodworker. Needless to say, he's quite happy.
Think of every if statement and loop as a moving part. Using the analogy, a computer program is like a machine with thousands of moving parts.
Perhaps blurring the lines between stockholder and customer is their intention? If so, I hope it works out well.
Believe it or not, I'd actually consider their system if, and only if, they also mailed me a normal DVD... Then again, even at BitTorrent speeds, I might as well drive to BestBuy just so I don't have to jump through their DRM hoops.
Such devices are becoming quite popular because they're faster then handwriting! Hopefully we'll eventually find one in every office and home!
Why do I not want it? Over a year ago it started popping up dialogs on my screen. Once it automatically downloaded a toolbar on to my computer. When it did that, it displayed a liscense agreement that I could not cancel.
Fortunatly, I was able to get rid of the thing for good by switching to GAIM.