Programming facilities (was: RE: How Do You Do Business Apps? (Morphic Design Philosophy))

Stefan Matthias Aust sma at 3plus4.de
Sat Feb 26 22:25:58 UTC 2000


At 16:47 25.02.00 -0800, you wrote:
>Paul and all,
>
>> For example, just a couple hours ago ago, I started FreeCell, clicked
>> "submorphs", pulled a card off the table and dropped it.
>[Lots and lots of stuff deleted]
>> The moral is stay away from the ALT and CTRL keys I guess? 
>
>No. The moral is to learn your system better.

I disagree.  The moral is that the system's documentation isn't good enough.

I like the way the Gnome developers (probably also other groups of
developers of other projects) deal with a very similar problem.

If a user sugests a feature that's already there, they consider this as an
UI bug.  Obviously, the system wasn't designed well enough to allow the
user to discover that feature.  It's not exactly the same thing but closely
enough.

Most Squeak programmers don't want to hunt for hidden treasures like the
features mentioned in the original email.  There should be an obvious way
to find them.

Programming and documenting aren't two unrelated task with the latter being
optional!  I don't talk about documenting methods, aka the implementation
here but about documenting the architecture and the set of available
features. What's if Scott leaves SqC.  Who does then know which settings
will turn of what features?  Do you really still understand all parts of
the system?  Did you already decided to leave a questionable method in
place just in case it might be important but nobody knows exactly?


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  Bevor wir fallen, fallen wir lieber auf.





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