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From: stpeters@dawn.steinmetz (Dick St.Peters)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Request for human interface design anecdotes
Message-ID: <7995@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Nov-87 15:00:21 EST
Article-I.D.: steinmet.7995
Posted: Fri Nov 27 15:00:21 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 23:31:17 EST
References: <1721@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM> <1621@megatest.UUCP>
Sender: root@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP
Reply-To: dawn!stpeters@steinmetz.UUCP (Dick St.Peters)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 23
Keywords: Novice and Expert, Programmer and End User

In article <1819@pdn.UUCP> reggie@pdn.UUCP (George Leach) writes:
>One pet peeve of mine
>over the past several years has been the complaints voiced by people about
>the cryptic UNIX UI.  Well is it anymore cryptic than any other real work
>Operating System?  How about MVS?  Or VMS?

It's a pet peeve of mine too, but one I understand.  I can't comment
on MVS, but UNIX vs. VMS is an everyday issue here, and no, UNIX is
not more cryptic than VMS *as_used_by_experts*.  However, for the
novice user, things are different.  For a novice wanting to see the
contents of file junk.txt, it is comforting to say "type junk.txt",
which resembles English.  Watch an expert, though, and s/he will use
"t/p junk", as cryptic as any UNIX command.

(The VMS interface is not always so friendly to novices: name the file
"junk" instead of "junk.txt", and a novice may never figure out how to
read it.  As for expert interfaces, rename the expert's .emacs file to
sav.emacs and watch him/her try to recover.)
--
Dick St.Peters                        
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY
stpeters@ge-crd.arpa              
uunet!steinmetz!stpeters