On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 03:12:30PM +1200, Greg Ewing wrote: > Abe Dillon wrote: > >They still find it's better to use a red break > >light symbol with the aim of clearly communicating to non-experts. > > The handbrake warning light on my dashboard has a symbol > that represents a brake drum and a pair of brake shoes, > and the word "BRAKE" written underneath it. That's a > technical term and an implementation detail, right there > in the user interface!
Indeed. I wonder whether Abe drives, and if he does, whether he has read the owner's manual. They are typically *full* of jargon. Similarly for bulldozers. Here's a short instructional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2mh6kUuedk Many of the controls are described in common terms (why would they need jargon terms for "forward", "reverse", "left", "right"?), but they also mention specialist jargon like "throttle" and "decelerator". A bulldozer has perhaps as many as a dozen critical functions: move forward, reverse, lift the blade, etc, which can only combine in a rather limited number of ways. The user-interface is designed for real-time manual operation. Programming languages have multiple dozen features, hundreds if you include Python's std lib, which combine in a near-infinite number of ways. Programming is a batch operation: while a bulldozer operator has to react on the spot, the programmer typical gets to think ahead, write some code, think some more, write a bit more, do some incremental tests, write some more code, do some research, write a bit more code, think some more etc in dozens or hundreds of iterations before actually running the code in production. I don't think its productive to compare programming to driving a bulldozer. A better analogy would be sound mixing: https://videohive.net/item/sound-mixer-2/2244660 https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/glossary-technical-terms -- Steve _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
