Randall R Schulz a écrit :
And no one is required to know about how modern (or even primitive)
automobile technologies really work. They rightly expect to buy a car,
fuel it up, drive it around, give it periodic maintenance and
occasional repair (it's a mechanical device, and wear and failure are
inevitable) and that's it.
do you know that "occasional repair" is much easier if you
know a little about the car function, as not to wait
extremely long is you see oil under the engine :-)
There certainly is an issue of expectations management, but remember,
this all started out by me saying that I thought the software
profession has not done a good enough job. And it hasn't.
the problem is what is "enough". Many programs are awfull.
ls makes a very good job, grep also, as many unix utilities.
when you see what people do with photoshop of GIMP, you can
say these programs are very good.
Many programms are good enough to drive the user to his limit.
msword is a not so bad product, but the way most users use
it is a nightmare :-( same for OOO.
It's only untrue if the software really is well designed and
implemented. I just am not willing to give most software today, even
software that is pretty good by today's standards, truly high marks.
There's just too far to go, yet.
it's always possible to do better job, but in many places we
have really good stuff (really bad ones also, to say the truth)
I was said as my first computer lesson: a computer do what
you ask it to do, not what you hope it will do (un
ordinateur fait ce qu'on lui dit de faire, pas ce qu'on
voudrait qu'il fasse).
most of the problem is in the users mind, and no computer
can read this mind, neither his owner can do often :-). It's
exactly the same as when you need to have a "cahier des
charges" (written specifications?) for a given work. The
client often even don't know exactly what he wants and you
have to make him deliver his own ideas.
some softwares are very good at this job, but not enough and
not all.
to be more precise, I think that the software is usually not
at fault when there is a problem with the user, but the
documentation is.
programmers are often very good at coding, but not always as
good as using the programm (and this is what you are saying,
in fact, when you say that the program is not good enough),
but often very bad documentation writers.
I remember the manuals of my HP-41 scientific calculator.
It's writing was done by two high level matematician and one
programmer. The writing was done at the same exact time the
calculator was built, and lasted the same time. extremely
good manuals... rare...
jdd
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