Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:51:32 -0700 From: Charlie Kester <corky1951@comcast.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: freebsd - for the win Message-ID: <20100612225132.GB79077@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20100612201255.GD97434@libertas.local.camdensoftware.com> References: <86eigdx6vl.fsf@red.stonehenge.com> <4C13320C.5090700@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20100612153813.GA53180@guilt.hydra> <4C13C737.6050400@infracaninophile.co.uk> <AANLkTimVznpvn-4zNSpD38dvTWHsZRCxeqMVT2oc4FCs@mail.gmail.com> <20100612201255.GD97434@libertas.local.camdensoftware.com>
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On Sat 12 Jun 2010 at 13:12:55 PDT Chip Camden wrote: > >Call me fatalistic, but I think there is a direct relationship between >FreeBSD's high quality and it's lack of popularity. If it catered to >the common herd, its compromises would be many. > I think we're straying from the original topic, but I agree. I worked at Microsoft Developer Support in a previous life, beginning at the time that Visual C++ and MFC were first introduced. One of Microsoft's big selling points was what they called "wizards" -- basically, a set of simple, dialog-based code-generation tools. What I observed, over and over again, is that people would use the wizards to create simple MFC applications and then get hopelessly stuck as soon as they needed to do something the wizards or the MFC framework didn't easily provide. All the wizards had accomplished was to move the point where people got stuck; they hadn't done anything to increase people's understanding of how MFC-based code worked or how best to customize it. What the wizards did accomplish was to bring in a whole bunch of new customers who were encouraged to think of themselves as MFC programmers, without requiring them to have even the most elementary competence in MFC. I'm reminded of this whenever I see proposals to make the FreeBSD system install and configuration more graphical and "user-friendly". Same goes for the ports system. As one of my old colleagues used to say, "There are no shortcuts to the righthand side of the learning curve."
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