John Zabroski wrote:
Arguing technical details here misses the point. For example, a
different conversation can be started by asking Why does my web
hosting provider say I need an FTP client? Already technology is way
too much in my face and I hate seeing programmers blame their tools
rather than their misunderstanding of people.
Well... maybe you need a different hosting provider?
Whether it's ftp under the hood, or http, or something else, there are
lots of ways to hide the complexity from general users. Me... I prefer
ftp (as well as being my own provider), but if you want simple, there
are lots of hosting providers with easy-to-use interfaces that all work
through a browser.
Start by asking yourself how would you build these needs from scratch
to bootstrap something like the Internet.
Probably not that much differently. The Internet evolved much like
biological systems. Start with small "piece parts," combine them in
various ways, then start combining the combinations. More complex
behaviors emerge.
What would a web browser look like if the user didnt need a seperate
program to put data somewhere on their web server and could just use
one uniform mexhanism? Note I am not getting into "nice to have"
features like resumption of paused uploads due to weak or episodic
connectivity, because that too is basically a technical problem -- and
it is not regarded as academically difficult either. I am simply
taking one example of how users are forced to work today and asking
why not something less technical. All I want to do is upload a file
and yet I have all these knobs to tune and things to "install" and
none of it takes my work context into consideration.
Again, there's a choice:
1. something monolithic - might do exactly what you want, very simply,
but... as soon as you want to do something slightly different, you're
screwed
2. something very modular and flexible - like unix shell commands and
pipes - let's you do practically anything, but it's pretty complex
3. same as 2, plus an interface layer that hides complexity - like say,
a web page with an "upload file" button, coupled to a server-side script
that does the heavy lifting, or a remote file system that you can mount
on your desktop - the capabilities are all there, different service
providers set things up differently
as to "All I want to do is <x> and yet I have all these knobs to tune
and things to "install" and none of it takes my work context into
consideration."
- well... different people might want to do things differently, and how
is it going to know your work context?
Why do I pay even $4 a month for such crappy service?
What do you expect for $4/month?
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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