On 11/1/2015 11:17 AM, Laura Creighton wrote:
In a message of Mon, 02 Nov 2015 01:27:23 +1100, "Steven D'Aprano" writes
a reply to Michael Overtoon:
He was actually responding to my proposal to warn about duplicating
stdlib names when saving-as.
Users are inclined to ignore alerts, dialogs and error messages, and
applications try very, very hard to reinforce that tendency.
http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/4518/should-alert-boxes-be-avoided-at-any-cost
I read this and at least some of the concerns do not apply.
* IDLE does not spam users with alerts. And I may move some of the rare
ones to a new 'log' window. The only one I see with any regularity is
'Save work before close?' and that I appreciate.
* 'Save-as' is not part of the regular workflow. It is done once per
file. Experienced users who know to avoid stdlib names will not see the
messages unless they accidentally duplicate one -- which is possible
because there are now so many. I personally would like being warned.
* The target of the message is naive beginners who have not read any
docs and who may not yet even know about the stdlib and imports. The
*need* the info and may not be so jaded about alert messages.
One person suggested something I thought about: make the 'right thing'
box bigger than the 'dangerous thing' box.
Good to see that IDLE is going to continue that fine old tradition of
degrading usability for the sake of a quick and easy non-solution to a
problem.
Doing nothing is also a non-solution.
I have a professional carreer based on saying 'do not blather useless
error/warning messages' at people. I am pretty much always on your
side of the argument. But, here we are, first time in 22 years, and
I am here arguing in _favour_ of a warning message. :)
Knowing that you are not a fan of such things makes your request stronger.
> I very much want to convince Michael that my warning will be
> sufficient,
If the message works half the time, I would consider it successful.
> thus preventing people from writing out strings.py is unnecessary.
I will not absolutely prevent duplicate names unless Guido says to do so.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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