----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Goodwin" <acme_ent(a)bellsouth.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 11:07 PM
Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor
From:
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc(a)conman.org>
So why do people expect to get immedate work out
of a computer without
training?
Because Bill Gates said they could.
Glen
0/0
Is it because of Bill, or because it's simply so?
Dick
Twenty-eight years ago, I walked up to a Teletype ASR33
hooked to a Control Data 6500 and started writing BASIC
programs, and the closest thing to training I had was
to find a drawer containing some end-user documentation.
Five years later, on my first day of my first professional
full-time position as a programmer on a system I'd never
used before (a Prime), I was handed a magtape from another
system I'd used only once or twice (an HP 2000/Access system),
and before the day was over, had pulled the programs from
the tape and had several of them running.
But I'm a geek. At what cost have we dumbed-down the computer
so that nearly anyone can use it? And are you aware that in
the minds of marketing people, the market is *far* from
saturated, as there are still lots of people who never use
them and don't have them. So you can expect another order of
magnitude of dumbing-down...
-dq