Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 12:50:02 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: terry@lambert.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de, jdp@polstra.com, nate@sneezy.sri.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GAS question Message-ID: <199603191950.MAA24541@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199603190226.MAA27673@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Mar 19, 96 12:56:33 pm
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> > > This legitimises me complaining that VC is a Windows tool, that it's a
> > > Microsoft product, and that your socks are mismatched.
> >
> > The only valid corrolary in that list is "is a Windows tool". I didn't
> > complain that it was GPL'ed ("an FSF product") and I didn't complain
> > about an unrelated issue ("mismatched socks").
>
> Actually, the complaints are all irrelevant, yours and mine both. The
> objects are _tools_. Personal bias aside, both work reasonably well.
My personal bias comes from disliking the need to add memory to run
applications (as opposed to something useful, like a kernel). It's
not so much the Emacs command set, per se, as the fact that it's a
huge memory pig.
I guess I could live with unguessable command syntax (how do you
exit microEmacs, anyway?) if I had printed documentation. Which
I have for VC++.
Hell, I'd even be willing to pay the same several hundred dollars
I paid for VC++ just to get a comparable environment with printed
documentation.
> > Bitching about the user interface is a legitimate gripe, considering
> > *ALL* UNIX boxes come with vi and *NOT* all UNIX boxes come with Emacs.
>
> Not all Windows boxes come with VC either. (Fortunately 8)
You're right; they don't come with a developement environment. I
don't know why this is fortunate, though: I see precious little
difference between writing 0's vs. 1's and 0's to a > 600M CDROM,
if they are masked instead of individually burned one-offs. There
is no difference in cost to Microsoft.
> > How about "not having to learn a user interface"? Windows and Motif
> > applications which are written in accordance with the style guides
> > have the common attribute that once you learn one, you've learned
> > them all (unless someone does something *stupid* and "enhances" the
> > interface away from the style guide to make the product "better").
>
> This is pedantry. You can use the same argument to insist that all APIs
> should be the same.
You're right. And I often do. And I will continue to do so. And I
will continue to point to crappy design instances as to why WIN32
should not be "the one true API".
> Or that hammers should have the same 'user interface' that screwdrivers do.
Now *that's* pedantry... Reductio Ad Absurdum.
> You've just chosen somewhere else to draw your version of the grey line.
> It's a popular position for it; Apple made millions out of it, but then
> twenty billion flies can't be wrong either.
The implication here being that it's only worth a 8% market, ignoring
the fact that Apple *chose* to have 100% of a 8% market instead of 30%
of a 100% market. This was a business decision (a bad one, IMO, and
in J.L. Gassee's and in Guy Kawasaki's, if their writing is to be
believed), and had dick-all to do with whether their user interface
was command line or clickable.
If you want a majority market, you have to learn the lesson taught
by the VCR clock/timer user interface.
> > > > I personally *really* like "BattleMap", an IDE (Interactive Developement
> > > > Environment). It doesn't run on FreeBSD, unfortunately.
> > >
> > > Why not? What can we do to rectify this horrific situation? 8)
[ ... ]
> An answer to the first would have been enough; "proprietary software". Yuck.
So write a free alternative, and give it an easy to use interface like
the commercial product has (and their interface *isn't* Emacs, in case
you didn't guess that).
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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