Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 18:17:33 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Cc: joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu, molter@logic.it, adrian@obiwan.psinet.net.au, vas@vas.tomsk.su, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: To UNIX or not to UNIX ;-). Was: PPP problems. Message-ID: <9175.866423853@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:25:43 %2B0930." <199706160055.KAA08401@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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> Me, with any luck. Last exam for this semester today. Yay! Now, if > anyone wants to fund me for this exercise... 8) This is a highly attractive scenario - please send me some financial estimates and I'll see if we can't perhaps put a package together. Anyone else here willing to put their money where their mouth is? :-) I also expect that Mike would have to send me those estimates before I could truly say it's doable, but if this were the start of an organized "pledge drive" then I'd toss in $10K as an initial seed figure right here and now, not even having to think too hard about it. This is something that really needs doing and I've been convinced for a long time that there's nobody in their right minds who'd do it all for free - it's just too much work. So if Mike's about to come free to do it, let's hire the man! But we need more than my $10K. :) > ... and I am beginning to suspect, when they _do_ shoulder the > herculean task and start to mov forwards, the response from the rabble > is so underwhelming that they give up anyway. The masses don't lead GUI development - they just don't. It's one of the great ironies of human factors engineering. :-) The masses only know a usable thing when they've seen it, and *then* and only then they will tell you what they hate about it so that you can make suitable adjustments. Ask them exactly what they want up-front, and without a visible guide, and most of the rabble will say something to the effect of "Uh.. I dunno, something graphical, I guess! I mean, you know, like windows!" :-) In the Windows and NeXTSTep camps, what I saw was a powerful Principle Architect who understood GUI design fairly well (and say all the bad things you like about Windows, folks, but they were the first to walk over a lot of new and broken ground that Xerox hadn't gotten to yet). Now GUI design is an evolving science, and those PAs definitely made some mistakes along the way, but they were still far enough ahead of the game that they produced some of the GUI APIs that the rest of us talked about throughout most of the 80's. I would say that'd be called "having an impact", and if we want our own efforts to have any impact it's going to be through the similar efforts of one, maybe two guys With Vision(tm) who code a mad streak and produce something that's usable enough to allow the more junior programmers to start to say "Ah, OK, now I get it. I think I can use this thing of yours!" Otherwise it's just too abstract and the junior programmers don't flock around what they don't understand. ;) > Note I have received a total of 0 (zzero) responses to my most recent > posting to the -config mailing list regarding the architectural > prototype for the server side of the configuration framework. Am I > supposed to take this as a sign of encouragement? No, just a sign that human nature is still about the same as it's always been. The tribes are simply waiting for you to part the red sea and lead them across, they really aren't interested in the facinating lecture you're trying to deliver on hydrodynamics first. ;-) Jordan
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