----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Jaffe" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 3:09 PM
Subject: Principle of Least Astonishment (Was: IDCAMS delete with mask)
Pinnacle wrote:
... They violated Lionel Dyck's "principle of least astonishment".
The Principle of Least Astonishment is attributable to Lionel Dyck?
Ed,
Lionel was the first person I ever heard use these words to describe the
effect. I've spent the last hour researching this and cannot find an
attribution for who created this little gem, but it's clear that its use is
widespread. Wikipedia does mention Occam's Razor. Two other references are
made to "The Humane Interface" by Jeff Raskin, and E.S. Raymond's "The Art
of Unix Programming", which has a section entitled "Applying the rule of
least surprise".
Tom
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