11 Oct
2011
11 Oct
'11
8:09 p.m.
On 11/10/11 10:52 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 10/11/2011 06:05 PM, jim s wrote:
Lately you are ascribing to me a lot of positions, or anticipating
assertions, that I haven't made. For example, I never said you hate
GUIs, or hate anything modern. Most of what I was saying was defending
the web as a decent (if not perfect) implementation of remote computing
services. Some of my points blurred into the internet, admittedly (like
streaming video), but TCP/IP isn't perfect either. Nothing is perfect,
is it.
Try calming down a tad. I'm not the Antichrist. After all, I like Scheme. :)
If you want real Neanderthal views, I don't
think that the X / gui
interface is useful. Real heads down data entry still doesn't work as
fast on anything PC unless it is emulating a good old fashioned terminal.
we had people who could do data entry at full keying speed on our
systems with a Microdata Reality system running 32 terminal. Mind you
this was on a system with an 8 bit microprogrammed data base system,
virtual memory, and interpreted Basic as the system applications
implementation language.
That said, I had several of my keyers up to recently who have never seen
a system which didn't cause more pauses or keying errors than they had
on the keying system.
I don't mind this, but have to say that there are some applications
where the old way got it right, and none of the replacements could fully
come up to the original system.
That's not a "Neanderthal view", that's a practical productivity view.
I know several professional accountants and a couple of EAs, and they
all say the same thing. Everything "went Windows" in their business a
few years ago, and their data entry efficiency dropped through the
floor. One of my best friends is a guy a few years older than me who
writes custom extensions for a large, well-known, big-company commercial
accounting package that is now Windows-only. He frequently gets
questions from his customers about about writing a character-based
interface for it. (his wife is an EA)
Now, before people like Toby latch onto that and scream at me for
"hating GUIs" or "hating anything modern" or whatever people like to
push my buttons about, I LOVE GUIs, and I LOVE modern things. It's just
that I love the concept of "using the right tool for the job" even more.
If that tool happens to have been introduced to the world at an earlier
time than some other tool, then so be it, it's still the right tool for
the job. Period.
Many old ways were wonderful, I'm often the first to say so.
--T
-Dave