

The Early History of Smalltalk (1993) - joubert
http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html

======
whoopdedo

        millions of personal machines and users, mostly outside of direct institutional
        control. Where would the applications and training come from? Why should we
        expect an applications programmer to anticipate the specific needs of a
        particular one of the millions of potential users? An extensional system 
        seemed to be called for in which the end-users would do most of the
        tailoring (and even some of the direct constructions) of their tools.
    

There are millions of people using personal computers. But the fraction of
them who do any programming is miniscule. The applications and training come
from a small number of companies becoming very rich by doing the programming
for those millions of computers.

And yet I continue to read of people suggesting that the tailoring problem can
be solved by teaching users how to program. What has happened instead is
application developers have learned that it is much easier to program the
users to suit the needs of the computer than it is to program the computer to
suit the needs of the user.

~~~
mercer
> What has happened instead is application developers have learned that it is
> much easier to program the users to suit the needs of the computer than it
> is to program the computer to suit the needs of the user.

Apologies for going off on a tangent, but I feel this 'fact' (which strikes me
as plausible) is one of the reasons that interfaces such as Siri, Cortana and
Google Now are not used to their full potential by many people. In fact, most
people with smartphones that I know consider the voice interface just a toy; a
party trick.

A few months ago I decided to try and use Siri more regularly. At first it was
primarily setting timers for cooking or a pomodoro-ish approach to my day.
Then I started creating reminders (which on my phone are automatically sent to
my OmniFocus / GTD inbox). Then I started creating one-off reminders for
specific times ("siri, remember to bring my drawing notebook at 9:45" for a
meeting at 10:00). Then I started using the geolocation feature. On top of all
that I use siri for the simple requests like searches, the current time,
whether it's going to rain, etc.

Having done this for a while, it baffles me to watch people around me set
their alarms manually, install special egg timer apps, create manual tasks all
the time, and so on, where a simple siri command would suffice.

While I do understand that many people might feel self-conscious using voice-
commands in public, nobody I know uses them in private either, where they're
plenty useful.

The only explanation I can think of is that the user is not properly
programmed to use Siri, and Siri is not 'complete' enough (yet) to be used
without some basic instructions.

(in a broader sense I notice this with all computer functions as well. Many
people I know have no clue of what simple things they can do to vastly speed
up their computer use. And that's largely because nobody taught them, and
they're just not the type of person that constantly tries to find the optimal
workflow.)

------
ackalker

      New ideas go through stages of acceptance, both from 
      within and without. From within, the sequence moves from 
      “barely seeing” a pattern several times, then noting it but 
      not perceiving its “cosmic” significance, then using it 
      operationally in several areas, then comes a “grand 
      rotation” in which the pattern becomes the center of a 
      new way of thinking, and finally, it turns into the same 
      kind of inflexible religion that it originally broke away 
      from. From without, as Schopenhauer noted, the new idea 
      is first denounced as the work of the insane, in a few 
      years it is considered obvious and mundane, and finally 
      the original denouncers will claim to have invented it.
    

So true, sadly. I deeply regret that today, many people interviewing for
programming jobs get grilled over their knowledge of this particular OO design
pattern or that, while neither the interviewer nor the applicant may realize
that some of these "patterns" are just dogmas invented to deal with particular
language limitations of (older versions of) Java, and entirely different
patterns (or even paradigms) are available if only one takes the time to look
past the boundaries of one's preferred (or prescribed from above) programming
language.

IMO, prospective programmers should be invited to show true creativity and
insight, not to just queue up to create the (N+1)-th CORBA framework.

Structured programming, modules, OOP, FP, ever more elaborate type systems,
whatever next new thing is going to be seen as the One True Way, I still
believe that Socrates will have the last laugh (...or grin)...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method)

------
talles
What's this address: _kay2@apple.com.Internet#_ ?

~~~
jaak
It's from the "old" days when there were many different email networks. The
".internet#" parts tells how to route to different gateways/networks.

See [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/inter-network-
guide/](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/inter-network-guide/)

