When people ask me about writing for Access vs. MySQL, my best comparison
is that MS products are focus on how things look on the screen versus
how they act. MySQL (and most other UNIX tools) are focus on how things
work and act. A UI is left as an exercise to the reader, or is at least
the second thing a coder thinks about.
Another notable example of this is Word. In trying to be a true
WYSIWYG system, it has completely shattered the idea of an easy-to-use
word processor. At least apps like LyX make no claims of WYSIWYG-ness,
instead calling themselves "WYSIWYM" (What You See Is What You Mean),
which offloads the effort of making everything look perfect onscreen.
-Mark
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> A good example of Ben's point might be M$ Access. It offers a pretty series
> of boxes you can connect w/ lines to choose items out of column A to match
> with column B while avoiding column C, etc etc. When you're all done it
> creates an ugly SQL statement behind the scenes to do the work. Although
> something like Access could help someone learn SQL ("oh, I see how that
> works..."), most users couldn't care less about the SQL statements
> themselves. Likewise with any HTML GUI. Many users probably started with
> them by saying "I can use this to help learn HTML" but, if you have a GUI
> doing the work most people will not bother to look under the hood. And the
> people who actually want to lean SQL or HTML, for instance, should *never*
> use the results of GUIs as an example (I remember the first time I saw
> FrontPage use about eighty space characters when a simple two column table
> would do the same thing and not care about screen size).
>
> If someone wants to learn sed, awk, SQL, HTML, PERL or almost anything
> similar, the best way is to just start small and build your knowledge in
> steps. For instance, write an awk script to print the fourth field of every
> record. Next, have it compare that field to a constant and only print it if
> they are the same. Next, have it compare several fields to different
> constants and print a different message based on matching combinations.
> Then, replace the constants with variables and have it accept those values
> as command line arguments or passed from a script. Just going through an
> exercise like this, and learning from your own mistakes (there will be
> plenty), will be a lot more informative than any amount of time spent
> analyzing a GUI's code. (For anyone who has never played with awk and think
> this is an over simplified assignment, give it a try...it can be a real eye
> opener).
>
> Remember, "If you give a man a hand out, you take away his will to work"
> -Larry
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benjamin Scott [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 10:38 AM
> To: Greater NH Linux Users' Group
> Subject: Re: Procmail front-end?
>
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2001, Jeffry Smith wrote:
> > Some basic tools that would enable them to make simple choices,
> AND SHOW
> > THEM THE COMMAND LINE EQUIVILENT (i.e. learn by example) would be
> > extremely useful.
>
> Maybe I'm just a cynical bastard (okay, no "maybe" about it), but
> every time
> I've seen such a front-end for anything, I see two groups of people:
> Those who
> do not want to learn the underlying tool and just want the GUI, and
> those who
> know that you cannot program a computer by clicking a mouse. (You
> can layout
> UI forms, but you cannot write code.) The former group inevitably
> comes
> complaining to the latter group when their front-end fails to be
> sufficiently
> flexible.
>
> sed and awk text-processing languages. Note the word "text". Now
> note the
> lack of the word "text" in the term "graphical user interface". See
> the
> problem?
>
> I might buy a graphic CBT (Computer Based Training) system for sed
> and awk,
> but a GUI front-end?
--
Mark Komarinski - Senior Systems Engineer - VA Linux Systems
(cell) 978-697-2228
(email) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Have one day pleasant" - Babelfish
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