HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc
From: flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 92 23:10:24 GMT

andy@research.canon.oz.au (Andy Newman) writes:
>Is it just that the memory management has become pretty terrible these days or
>what?

No, it's that people are learning how to write programs in stupid ways.  They
end up having ten routines that do the same thing, and do it in unnecessarily
complicated ways.  It's the opposite of structured programming, despite the
fact that it uses procedures and local scope.  One project I work on has a
legacy left behind by someone who specialized in meaningless layers of
complexity, so that some files contain ten procedures each of which only calls
the corresponding procedure (with a similar but not identical name) in the next
file.  Object-oriented programming is the newest inception of this bizarre
strategy, in which simply to write a sort routine, people create this
complicated list management system with dynamic memory and all sorts of things,
then they return to their thoughts about a sort routine but only for a moment
because they decide to create a nifty comparator class with subclasses for all
kinds of different types of comparisons, then they discover that they've left
out tri-valued comparisions like quicksort requires, so they write
corresponding classes to take apart these complex data structures and put them
into dynamically-allocated arrays so that they can pass them to a global
function which casts pointers into ints for no apparent reason and thus will
only work on some architectures.

Object-oriented programming contains some good ideas, and I'm growing fonder
and fonder of C++, but you have to understand fundamental data structures to
write good programs, and any attempt to change that results in shitty programs.
Then we get to MacApp on the Macintosh, with hordes of programmers who don't
really understand C++ trying to write programs in it and treating most MacApp
calls as gods to which you have to make certain kinds of sacrifices rather than
entry points which perform a certain function.
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:595 comp.human-factors:1935 comp.windows.misc:1233 comp.windows.news:546 comp.windows.x:15836
From: zwicky@erg.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: n
Date: 28 Aug 92 18:42:36 GMT
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA

In article <1992Aug28.113502.24092@walter.cray.com> toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg) writes:
>Another thing that long-time users forget is that many new users cannot 
>type very well, but everyone can point and click. 

This is false. Not everybody can point and click, and bad typing is a
lot more effective than bad pointing and clicking. Trust me; I spent
months getting to the point where I could consistently get any given
effect on the Mac. Under UNIX, if I could do something once, I could
do it again; on the Mac, it might have been blind luck. (Throwing
things away requires getting the mouse itself, not just the icon
you're dragging, onto the trash can. This is not true for putting
things into folders.) Both typing and point-and-clicking are skills
that have to be learned. Typing tends to have a better feedback. You
type something, and you can go back and see what it is you typed; you
move a mouse, and you don't see the track it left. Furthermore, typing
is a skill many people have developed on typewriters; using a mouse is
a completely new skill that has no non-computer application.

	Elizabeth D. Zwicky
	zwicky@erg.sri.com
From: bagwill@swe.ncsl.nist.gov (Bob &)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 4 Sep 92 13:26:39 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4


Bald faced assertions [beards are more trustworthy?]:

GUI's are easier to learn.
With GUI's, there's less to learn.
With GUI's, users stop learning.

CLI's are harder to learn.
CLI's take longer to learn.
But with CLI's users continue to learn.

However, most users want to get their job done, not learn more and more
about using computers.  Their goal is to reach a plateau of efficiency,
and stay there.

--
Bob Bagwill	NIST/Computer Systems Lab/Distributed Systems Engineering Group
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:545 comp.windows.misc:1203 comp.windows.news:518 comp.windows.x:15604 comp.human-factors:1869
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
From: preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Scott E. Preece)
Date: 24 Aug 92 22:01:51 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Motorola MCG, Urbana Design Center

In article <1992Aug23.020825.3490@uwm.edu> markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Hunk) writes:

|   For instance, the Tower of Hanoi solution below is typical of what I do.  I
|   don't even need to bother testing or debugging it, since I already PROVED
|   it will work (under the assumption that long integers are 32 bits, that the
|   parameter N (below) is <= 31, that you're compiling with an ANSI-C compiler,
|   and your system has sufficient memory.).
---
Amazing -- a person with provably correct fingers!
--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
uucp:	uunet!uiucuxc!udc!preece,	 arpa:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: /mit/yandros/.organizations
	<YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 04:37:19 GMT


  From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
> But that brings me to a GUI you forgot to mention... "Open Windows".
> Barf!!!

For me, at least, I use Open Windows as much as Open Look (and more
commonly Open Manhole or Open SchLook) to mean the same thing, since I
can't imagine anyone else being incsane enough to re-implement it...

  From: toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg)
> Without exception, all the people I've worked with (only as a favor; I
> don't do this for money) hated having to hunt-n-peck on the keyboard
> but loved the Mac interface. They were all productive beyond their
> hopes within a couple hours. There is a huge market for this type of
> casual user.

While I won't argue with this point, the major fault I find with the
Mac interface is the way this GUI is locked in to the system,
immovable.  I have seen *ONE* decently designed application; a graphic
FTP client with a small window at the bottom where the actually
protocol commands were shown.  If I felt like using a mouse, I could
simply select files and click buttons, but I still had the option of
getting things done at full speed by using the keyboard.  I see no
reason why the Mac GUI souldn't accomodate this in everything.  As an
example, a freind and I spent several minutes the other day sitting at
a Mac II running System 7 trying to find out how to do some
straightforward manipulations from the keyboard, and managed to find a
suggested binding that required use of keys on boths sides of the
keyboard IN CONJUNCTION WITH the mouse...  so much for User Interface
Design.  Whenever I try to use a Mac for any serious task for any
significant period of time, I find myself very frustrated at being
slowed down by the user interface.  (Does anyone know why there isn't a
magic key sequence to get to the menubar, for instance?)  I guess my
main complaint is that Apple sems to have sacrificed the
medium-to-high level user in favor of the the 'casual user', without
(IMHO) real justification.


--
-->Chad Phillip Brown<--||INTERNET:---->yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU
------------------------||NeXT:---------->yandros@milo.mit.edu
-->Student Information<-||UUCP:-->mit-eddie!mit-athena!yandros		
--->Processing Board<---||BITNET:------>yandros%mit.edu@mitvma
----->CSSConsultant<----||US:--->19 Myrtle;Somerville MA;02143
-------->IS-DCNS<-------||Voice:----------------->617-623-0877
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: fwp@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Computing Center, Mississippi State University
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 02:39:55 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.145034.4126@gdstech.grumman.com> david@gdstech.UUCP (David Nettles) says:
: What is "chrome"?

A bright metal used to make things like cars flashier and more modern
looking without contributing at all to how well they serve their
function (and, often, actually hurts functionality).

So "chrome" in windowing systems refers to features that make them
bigger, slower and prettier without actually making them any more
useful or intuitive.
--
Frank Peters  -  UNIX Systems Programmer  -  Mississippi State University
Internet: fwp@CC.MsState.Edu  -  Phone: (601)325-7030  -  FAX: (601)325-8921
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 22:13:44 GMT

In article <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (that's me) writes:
>In article <YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:
>>Personally, I despise OpenLook, just by taste, and find [...]
>
>[...]  But that brings me to a GUI you forgot to
>mention... "Open Windows".  Barf!!!  This has got to be the worst of
>the bunch!  [...]

Ok, I've been advised that Open Windows _is_ (or rather, implements)
Open Look.  At least I and the previous poster were obviously in
violent agreement!  ;-)

Where do they find the people that design these things?

One thing I'd like to add, it has struck me in the past that Apple's
Look-and-Feel copyright suits did massive damage to GUI design.  Not
that Apple's user interface is the best, but it gets hard to design
a good GUI if you first have to look around to see what everyone else
is doing and then come up with something different, just so that it's
different.  I mean, how many ways are there of designing a resizable
window frame?  We're running out of them fast.
--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629
From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 4 Sep 92 19:51:32 GMT
Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego

>Their goal is to reach a plateau of efficiency, and stay there.

... and then pretend they're experts.
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu
    "I wonder what's taking Guybrush so long..."
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 02:34:07 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.233227.12778@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au> ghm@ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller) writes:
>OK, someone working full-time on Mac software development may find it
>worth while to get the MPW Shell, but I question whether even the power
>users would.

ever try to actually USE the MPW shell? It's a piece of garbage. Not
only do they egregiously change keystrokes around so you're using
bizarre non-ASCII symbols for half of your work, but it is atrociously
slow! Bad display speed, slow command processing, ... If anything, it
is a parody of a CLI.

ObGripe of the day - "Yes/No/Always" dialogue boxes for which the
keyboard is dead. Nothing pisses me off more than not being able to
hit the "Y" key, but instead I have to go move to the mouse, carefully
position some little dealey within 10 pixels, and THEN press a button.
Both Macintoshes and NeXTs do this.

This is progress?
-- 
                __
nelson@reed.edu \/   Delicious & Nutritious breakfast cereals shot from guns!
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: n
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 31 Aug 92 09:47:58 CDT

In article <1992Aug28.184236.7300@erg.sri.com> zwicky@erg.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky) writes:
>In article <1992Aug28.113502.24092@walter.cray.com> toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg) writes:
>>Another thing that long-time users forget is that many new users cannot 
>>type very well, but everyone can point and click. 
>
>This is false. Not everybody can point and click, and bad typing is a
>lot more effective than bad pointing and clicking. Trust me; I spent
>months getting to the point where I could consistently get any given
>effect on the Mac. Under UNIX, if I could do something once, I could
>do it again; on the Mac, it might have been blind luck. (Throwing
>things away requires getting the mouse itself, not just the icon
>you're dragging, onto the trash can. This is not true for putting
>things into folders.) Both typing and point-and-clicking are skills
>that have to be learned. Typing tends to have a better feedback. You
>type something, and you can go back and see what it is you typed; you
>move a mouse, and you don't see the track it left. Furthermore, typing
>is a skill many people have developed on typewriters; using a mouse is
>a completely new skill that has no non-computer application.
>
>	Elizabeth D. Zwicky
>	zwicky@erg.sri.com

Okay, you're right, I was exaggerating when I said EVERYONE can point and
click. But my point still stands -- let me change it to "MOST people can
successfully point and click within an hour or two."

You can argue about how it was FOR YOU, but all I have to go on is the
people I have worked with. I have helped dozens of people learn the Mac;
many of them had tried and failed to be productive with IBM clones. These
types of people included salesmen, general contractors, doctors, church
secretaries, moms, 4th grade girls, etc. 

These are not your typical power users, but people who would like to get a 
few simple things done with their computer -- write letters, simple 
spreadsheets or databases, church bulletins and calendars, etc.

Without exception, all the people I've worked with (only as a favor; I
don't do this for money) hated having to hunt-n-peck on the keyboard but
loved the Mac interface. They were all productive beyond their hopes within
a couple hours. There is a huge market for this type of casual user.

For ME, I'll stick to Unix/C on my SPARCstation. But still get a lot of use
out of my Mac Plus at home...

---------------------------------------------+------------------------------
;-) I'd rather be ____  Thomas R. Arneberg   | Inet: toma@cray.com
:-) singing in a |____| Senior IC Design Eng.| UUCP: ...!uunet!cray!toma
:-) Barbershop  _|   _| Cray Research, Inc.  | CLAIM TO FAME: Loni Anderson 
:-) Quartet!   (_)  (_) Chippewa Falls, Wisc.|   went to my high school 
---------------------------------------------+------------------------------
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:671 comp.human-factors:2048
From: plutchak@pilsner.geo.brown.edu (Joel Plutchak)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 1992 20:50:16 GMT
Organization: Brown University Planetary Geology
NNTP-Posting-Host: pilsner.geo.brown.edu

In article <NEERI.92Sep1141334@iis.ethz.ch> neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
>I don't wnat to offend anybody, but I think most of the
>complaints about the fixed nature of the Mac UI are made by people who are
>power users of other machines, but casual users of the Mac.

   But Mac fanatics... er, partisans, say the Mac is the greatest thing
since sliced pimento loaf *because* it's easy for anybody (even us
casual users) to use.  If it takes a "power" Mac user to use a Mac
well, where's the advantage?
   I find that the users I support, most of them fairly experienced
Mac users, want me to add CLI features to programs I develop for them.
They like a graphical interface for a lot of tasks, but realize that
there are some things which are better done through a command line.
Some GUI's support this ability well, where others would force you
to use the mouse for everything.  As a developer, I know which ones
*I* would rather use and support.
--
Joel Plutchak, Research Programmer/Analyst
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:593 comp.windows.misc:1230 comp.windows.news:544 comp.windows.x:15828 comp.human-factors:1930
From: rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 28 Aug 92 16:12:40 GMT
	<1992Aug28.132640.15662@crd.ge.com>
Organization: Human Communication Research Center
In-reply-to: halvers@procyon.crd.ge.com's message of 28 Aug 92 13:26:40 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.132640.15662@crd.ge.com>, Pete Halverson (ph) writes:

ph> The thing about having a 3d look to a button is that, in theory
ph> anyway, it makes it much more evident that it's supposed to be
ph> *pushed*.  To use Norman's term, it "affords" pushing by providing
ph> a natural visual clue.

Not to me, I don't expect to push pictures of buttons any more than I
expect to smoke pictures of pipes.

xcal, for example, has a button which is a picture of a mouse with a
button highlighted. _That_ is, to me, a good cue. I assume otehrs
would have different preferences. The worst fact about GUI guidelines
like motif or the apple horrer is that they are amazingly inflexable.
Motif has the added problem that it is disgusting on a black and white
display since taking away the chrome reveals that no one seems to have
given the actual interface much thought, so everything does lokk very
much the same.

ph> Conversely, something like just making the buttons edges round
ph> gives no such visual clue unless you've read the designer's style
ph> guide and sucessfully interned the "round edges => pushable"
ph> association!

Which takes, perhaps, 2 examples. Now, for some system where complete
novices have to do things in pressured situations that might be an
argument, but for 99.999% of possible users, the screen space, cpu
power, money etc. would be better spent making the actual task in hand
easier. 

Of course, that 2-second delay to learn which is a button may be of
importance in a shop or at a demo for a suit who signs the cheque to
buy the chrome that some poor underling has to work around. So, from
that point of view, it is good sense. That aregument also gave us one
button mice so that in-the-shop demos don't intimidate, but doing
anything useful requires 3 years choriography training.

Would anyone buy a tv set where the difference between turning it on
and changing channel was how manby times and how fast you pushed a
single button?

--
rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk			_O_
					 |<
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:587 comp.windows.misc:1225 comp.windows.news:541 comp.windows.x:15791 comp.human-factors:1924
From: bagwill@swe.ncsl.nist.gov (Bob &)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 28 Aug 92 13:13:24 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
: System 7 and Motif don't take more CPU power because they're rendering more
: stuff. They take more CPU power because they're badly designed internally.

IMHO, X is big because an X server is a guest operating system running
on top of our beloved kitchen-sink UNIX.  X has tasking, memory
management, IPC, resource management, security, and so on.  No wonder
it's big.  And every X client is a portable device driver that has to
be aware of the hardware and software environment, has to support
cooperative multitasking, has to deliberately share font and color and memory
resources, has to be well-behaved, or the system breaks.

--
Bob Bagwill
Caveat Canem
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:563 comp.windows.misc:1210 comp.windows.news:525 comp.windows.x:15652 comp.human-factors:1881
From: einari@rhi.hi.is (Einar Indridason)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: n
Date: 26 Aug 92 11:38:54 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers

In <id.3AOS.4A2@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:

>In article <1992Aug25.014057.29946@wl.com> schuette@wl.com (Wade Schuette) writes:
>> Amen to that.  I bought my first mac in 1984, and have been extolling the
>> virtues up till system 7.  I'm overwhelmed and lost by the new screens,
>> color 3-D-looking icons, and other totally irrelevant clutter that violates
>> all the rules.

>I believe the technical term is "angry fruit salad".

And is to be avoided at all costs.



>And it's a pity... finally the O/S is beginning to catch up to the '80s, the
>window system takes a dive back into the '60s. No, not mainframes and card
>punches, I mean psychedelics and black light discos ...

Which is (IMHO) a big over-kill.  And uses up too much of computer
resources that could be used for something else.


>(then there's the question of WHY IT TAKES SO MUCH GODDAMN MEMORY... but that's
> apparently considered normal these days... I understand WNT will require 8 MB)

Once upon a time, there was a complete development environment with editor,
compiler, linker and overlay manager.  It was called Turbo-Pascal version
3.00 from Borland for the PC machine.

It fitten on one diskette and the size of that complete development
environment was:  40k.  Forty Kilobytes.

But now when the GUIs have entered the computer world, you wont get away
with less than (say) 20-30MB for the smallest development environment.

(bad thing, bad thing)

-- 
einari@rhi.hi.is
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:668 comp.windows.misc:1314 comp.windows.news:615 comp.windows.x:16119 comp.human-factors:2044
From: dansmith@Autodesk.COM (Daniel Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful (placement of hardware)
Date: 3 Sep 92 20:54:16 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Organization: Autodesk Inc., Sausalito CA, USA

In <1992Sep2.124928.28994@csi.on.ca> tina@csi.on.ca (Tina Klein) writes:

> Keep the coffee on the right and the mouse on the left and you'll never have a 
> space problem.

> I have a corner workstation-desk-thing.  Mouse, keyboard, coffee.

> Manuals on the left. 

> WIP on the right.

	Or is that WHIP? :-)

	Being in a ports group, you get several machines, and with
them, mice...

	I have a DEC (java) with a mouse, an Indigo (catalina) with a mouse,
a PC (cite') with a mouse, and old faithful (bermuda), a Sparc with a
mouse... oftentimes I end up shoving keyboards left or right to make space for
the "current mouse".  I could go on about how the ESCape key is in
a different place on all of them (and how DEC is even wierder)...

	I keep wishing for a cordless keyboard and mouse that I could just
"aim" at the workstation I want.  Gee, want to go into business?

	I also keep wishing for a window manager that could extend
over all of the machines (propagating windows to and fro), like some
mushing together of the best X wm's and the Mac "oh, you want the
window over on this monitor now?" interface.

	Coffee goes between bermuda and cite.  Tape deck on top of cite's
monitor.  Coffee grinder by java (what else?).  Car stays outside.
-- 
     Daniel Smith, Autodesk, Sausalito, California, (415) 332-2344 x 2580
	      Disclaimer: written by a highly caffeinated mammal
	    dansmith@autodesk.com            dansmith@well.sf.ca.us
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:560 comp.windows.misc:1207 comp.windows.news:523 comp.windows.x:15648 comp.human-factors:1878