Re:Vim Is Saving Me Hours of Work When Writing Books and Cou...
by falcrist on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @02:03PM
(#19146417)
The coffee maker does indeed come with a booklet that explains what various messages mean, and what actions need to be taken to address these issues. Those steps are maybe two sentences long and generally self evident even without the booklet.
People complain about that, because they think things should be handled and explained within the machine itself. I don't complain about coffee machines, but I agree with the principle. If I have to go searching through manuals to figure out what actions I need to take to get something working, that piece of software has failed at user interface design.
Sometimes it's ok to fail at UI. I don't expect everything handed to me on a silver platter when I'm writing a bootloader for an 8051, but I do expect my tools to be reasonably user friendly. Vim isn't user friendly, and that understandably drives people away. Hell, even emacs can be a pain to work with.
I tend to use the example of a car in these topics, but I have a better one: a coffee maker. There are numerous non-obvious things one has to learn about coffee makers - like how to apply a water filter, and what kind to buy. Like the symbols that mean "not enough water", "not enough coffee", "dredge drawer full", and what to do when they show up. Somehow, I never see anyone complaining about this - because there's a social expectation that people can and should figure this out. The coffee machine comes with a small booklet explaining all of this in pictures and a dozen languages.
Yet somehow, with software people think that the UI should just have a button labeled "get my job done", pressing which will get their job done. It's a really broken mindset, because it's impossible (or rather, it's an AI-complete problem) to have software like that.