Sorry, nope, I would have read your thing (and I did later on, on
gmail) but the wifi has indeed gone bad again so I had to use a silly
computer with broken keyboard and a "bulldog" watch software kiosk
thing that tries to limit everything a user can do. I was using a web
terminal to access Alpine, since my email roles are defined there
best. But this computer has something like IE 6, and there are not
many web terminals that I could find -- still have to install one
locally I guess (on some remote server) but I saw or suspected I
needed administrative rights for that on the / that server.
The server/webterminal I do have requests a new captcha every 30
seconds unless you pay, which I have, but I guess my payment period
ran out, or, also a possibilty the thing just bugged out when I
entered my credentials.
I'm a bit more relaxed now seeing as I have been able to do something
useful and I got a few euros of internet credit on a SIM-card that is
now broadcasting my own wifi (from a smartphone) etcetera.
And I really want to use that gmail account now but it is too heavy
probably to keep using when you pay by the megabyte.
Quoting guyzmo <[email protected]>:
it's incredible that you're actually writing mails that are 500+
lines, and when someone takes time to answer you to half of what you
said, you're considering it's too long and not worth reading. That's
some kind of hypocrisis. However your local Internet sucks.
Hypocrisy. But it was not about being picky, it was about feeling
miserable because of the whole day going wrong.
Though you made me laugh with your first remark, when you tell me
how idiotic is what I wrote. Indeed, that's so stupid to actually learn
something and improve yourself.
I never said that. I related the impression and experience of your
person apparently (as are others in this group) making a very big deal
out of using or learning Vim, much more than you would for any other
tool, most likely.
My life journey is not about learning to use Vim, but about learning
everyday new stuff. It happens that I'm always learning more about Vim
along the way, as much as I'm discovering new tools, new ideas, new
languages and many other new stuff that makes me progress everyday as a
thinking human being.
That is not the impression I got, although of course what you describe
is perfectly healthy.
You said you're a programmer, and I hope I'll never get to work with
you, as given what you say you're too intellectually lazy to actually
try to learn something new or make any progress. And I'm not talking
about Vim, but Vim is one example amongs many other hints you gave. I
guess you're not even interested in learning other languages than what
you already know? Because what's the point? It's not like you could
become a better programmer than what you already are!
Too bad, maybe I could have made good use out of all those invested
hours, so that I myself wouldn't have to :p.
But your impression of me is entirely wrong.
When I happened to be teaching at people learning programmation, my
first advice was to try a few editors or IDEs out to make their mind
about it, and discover, learn as much as they can of that editor.
Because the more you know your editor, and your dev environment, the
more efficient you'll be at the other tasks you'll do.
Of course, but that was never the point.
But I guess there's no point talking with you, as you won't move
from your trollesque point of saying the tool is bad when you're
actually too lazy to understand how and why it's been designed that way
with a learning curve. If that tool was indeed that bad, do you think it
would still have such a wealthy community after 24 years, and 39 years
for Vi?
Then why don't you explain to me this good reason for making something
harder than it has to. I am sure you do not agree with that sentiment,
that this had been some kind of conscious choice, and I am sure it has
not.
I am also sure you disagree with the tool being harder than it needs
to in any case, but that is the whole point of the disagreement, not
whether I am trolling and how good or bad I am at it :p.
Sure the manual is heavy and also needs to be learned, but isn't it
positive that almost every single feature of vim is documented? No
manual can be perfect, and it's always hard to find the good questions,
but whatever you want the answer is in there!
It would be more positive if less manual was necessary, to be sure.
Anyway, I don't know why I'm again writing lengthy stuff you won't
read, as it looks like you're only there to stay on your point saying
that a tool you admit not knowing well, and that you're too lazy to
learn is necessarily not designed correctly because it's not working the
way you're expecting it to.
No, actually I was indicating that perhaps seeing as I cannot be the
only person with this experience or impression or perception (I am
sure you know many more people who have had this opinion of Vim,
right?) that there might be something of a truth in those opinions.
You see, when you call me a troll or an idiot or a stupid person, what
really happens is that you casually forget or do not realise that I am
not an individual unique person that has this opinion, experience or
frustration. (If that is still the case now). These words are
basically directed at scores and scores of users who struggle with the
same program. A person's opinions never arrive alone. I happen to be
the one to reveal such sentiment to you now in perhaps a bad way, but
I disagree with that, seeing as I am making the best of nearly
impossible circumstances (also a belief I hold ;-)). It is just that
my impression of you people (or at least a few of those who respond)
is that your frame of reference is made out of a group of people who
are very much LIKE YOU.
You claim that me myself, I am closed-minded, and unable to view
another person's perspective. But your answers and responses reveal to
me that you yourself are indeed appreciating or evaluating a
software's user friendliness out of a very... perhaps *uncommon* set
of PRIOR experiences. Just the fact that someone mentioned "ed" as a
standard reference for what an editor is.
I can tell you right away that virtually every person I know, has
"notepad" or "word" or "wordpad" or "evernote" or "textedit" or even
"openoffice" as the frame of reference for what constitutes a
"standard or regular" editor.
And I am sorry, this webmail client just caused me to lose text the
first time ever in perhaps 5 years time. Or longer, I have been with
this provider for a long time. Yes, no undo, but the draft saver
suddenly wanted me to renew my session, never seen that dialog before,
and then the draft was not saved, as expected.
I do not expect Vim to behave in a certain way. I am saying that there
are user interface dynamics and concepts and laws that are pretty
common among computer designers that have to serve the masses. But as
I was saying, Linux and Unix is a deep subculture to begin with.
And being on a Vim mailing list is even much deeper. How many people
are going to spend time, invest energy, into writing, complaining,
commenting or doing anything around an EDITOR?
Just the fact that someone is here, means he or she has invested a lot
of time in the program already. That fact reveals that there is
already a deep commitment. You don't go on a mailing list for
OpenOffice users. It is pretty nonsensical; perhaps you would post a
few customer support requests on some group or forum, but that is
about it.
It is not really a happy experience to hang around on Mozilla forums,
for example, with all the ego heads trying to be the "most appreciated
poster" or whatever. Status and recognition is what they are often
after. Actually, always. The same with the 'volunteers' on e.g. the
WordPress forums.
You say that I would not be the person to learn new languages and so
on. Back in the summer before my ... departure from being able to do
what I love, commenced, I spent time learning python and GTK2. At that
time, only to convert an old MS-DOS qbasic program of mine into
something newer that could perhaps eventually become something of a
basis for a GIMP plugin.
I am actually intending to modify a regular mITX motherboard so much
that I will be able to run registered ECC memory on a mainboard and
chipset and cpu that do not support it. Just so this development
server of mine will support 32 GB of RAM with the mainboard I love.
Because I want to stay away from onboard USB3, and I wanted serial and
parallel ports, and so on. I actually purchased a 400 euro (rebate,
200 euro) set of memory modules designed for some particular server
architecture, for that cause. I lack currently the knowledge and
electrical skills to achieve it. But studying the Intel CPU specs has
already been a bliss and a hopeful signal, as well as the fact that on
some hardware forum there is an electrical engineer that has been
wanting to try something of the same.
See, your impression of me is that my "lack of willingness" is some
universal trait about my person.
And you want to maintain that Vim is no different from any other
system you could want or need to learn.
But for me Vim is a thing that first, needs to work. It doesn't have
to do all that much special things. My skills are limited to:
- regular copy paste motions: yy, dd, D, p, and more of that. The
basics. Now my requirement has obviously been to improve that. So I
spent some time finding out how to do it. It was pretty hard to find
the proper place (in the help file) and I ended up with "windows". So
I tried to use windows. And then my interest in programming perhaps
faded for a few weeks, and I had already forgotten again everything,
seeing as especially there are a multitude of commands available and
listed in the help, and I tried to select just one or two for
remembrance. And the search for these answers had already cost me so
much energy already, and I don't have that much of it. And so I gave
up trying to do it over again with a 99% chance of forgetting
everything again in pretty much the same way (actually, a guarantee).
So I could have kept notes. Yes, indeed.
But I could spend that energy and focus on learning how to do this
thing, or on dealing with a life situation, and perhaps just making do
with a lesser solution in the meantime.
As a kid I read entire programming manuals. The MSX had a manual for
basic that covered ALL of the commands. I read them all, I believe. I
also studied an MS-DOS manual that I had had. I have read pretty much
every single help document or entry in the QBasic help file, as well
as in Borland Pascal. I tried to read reference manuals for MS-DOS
internals. (There was no Internet back then, these things arrived by
floppy from a computer magazine, and I had no BBS access either).
I have learned every x86 opcode but never went into protected mode assembler.
And perhaps you can call that a foundation for laziness but I
disagree. Perhaps I am a child of a younger generation, but I disagree
or do not agree entirely. The systems I used were very contained, its
scope was small. MS-DOS is a very small system with very few things
you can do. QBasic and Pascal provided limited, easy to grasp
collections... never more than you can assimilate.
The whole idea of a system being user friendly is to define its scope
properly. You do not want to bury a user with a 1000 options when he
needs only one. He'll need to spend hours finding the one he wants,
studying everything, if he is a detailed person, selecting and
discarding the rest. They say in programming "defaults matter".
It is not true that user experience is a subjective thing. The subject
is the human, and humans are perhaps more alike than you think. What
works for one person often works for another. Google Chrome is a
marvelous browser and it doesn't do a whole lot, but because it is a
limited thing that provides essentials, it is suitable for pretty much
everyone. I still prefer Opera, but it is more of a clone these days.
As soon as you know and understand the subject (and you don't need to
know every individual by heart, just the common shared sentiment and
perhaps prior experiences of a larger group) the experience or the
study of the experience becomes objective, or there would not even be
a field of Human Computer Interaction in science.
Just like every person benefits from being rinsed regularly. And
although many people claim they like perfumed soaps with nasty
chemical compounds, doesn't mean their bodies much like it the same. A
person who is unaware of bad lighting in a room, can still benefit
from it being improved. Someone who doesn't know how much the air
pollution gives him a headache, may still experience the difference
when going into a natural environment for a while.
There is a truth to people that is beyond personal preference.
Personal preferences are often ...idiosyncratic and peculiar, but
taking care of someone is not even all that hard a proposition. A
person who is panicking needs to be calmed. A person who is raging
needs to be told off. A person who is depressive needs to be loved. A
person who is jealous needs to soothed and comforted. And a person who
is possessive or greedy needs to be made aware of the bad or fearful
results that may come of it.
If things are easy to learn and master, because the path of using the
thing conveniently, automatically or naturally presents the user or
learner with new challenges at the precise right time --- which is
what happens when there is a sort of stepping stone progress or
process because opportunities are quickly realised .... then it is a
bliss using the system and getting better at it without effort.
The idea that learning should require effort is a misconception.
There is one author who has suggested to just dump all schools and
just let children hang out in offices and factories and workplaces. A
bit of a 'rough' proposition in this world, but still a sentiment that
I somewhat share.
Not even work should require effort. Efforting is a thing that reveals
that you are stepping away from what comes natural to you. Writing
this email is effortless, really, as long as I can keep myself from
getting into panics and depressions all the time. And rages, and all
the other stuff I just mentioned.
My programming is usually effortless no matter how much time and
energy I have to invest, in the sense that such a true investment also
rewards ample amounts of energy and time in return, as you've said.
Doing stuff you love doesn't cost energy, it increases it.
My health has been rather bad in a way that I've had to be very
specific about what to spend my energy on. People around me -- I will
not go into too much detail, it is not important now -- have been
trying to push me in directions saying "activate yourself" "start
doing more" and the things they would suggest were not the things I
wanted to do. The moment a new situation or appreciation arrived in me
and I started to see new opportunities for development and personal
goals, that would coincide - and still do - completely with who I am,
my life quickly gained momentum.
I have been at a point of so little energy that I wrote a poem about
it saying "The story of a murder, you hope that they still feel, You
hope their deadened nerve endings still connect to something real.
There's not much to consider, all of it is gone, The dreams of
yesterday in spite still try to linger on."
A subsequent poem went "The morning after the sunrise, there is still
troubles to be had. There's rowdy little midgets, and figures clad in
black. They want to make you believe that the sun is here to stay,
while you know perfect that it is a reminder of yesterday."
Now I am in a place where I am getting nutritionally depleted in every
way, in every single way, except one.
The one thing I am not getting depleted in is a greater love of the
failings of humanity.
Because you have to develop a mildness if you see around you the signs
of destruction and people just not being able to do better, not
knowing better, hurting people without cause and without
understanding. Trying to improve things and making them worse, trying
to help you and hurting you instead. Trying to give you things but
they only take away. Being concerned but never knowing the real reasons.
And just loving them and their efforts is the only thing you can do in
the end. Because everything else is futile and pointless anyway.
By the way, that's the definition of a troll.
And you broke my trollometer!
--
Guyzmo,
waiting for the murphy point
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