On Fri, Dec 08, 2017 at 02:12:06PM -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Szymon Lipiński <mabewlun@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, if I have a new program I usually read some documentation. It really
> > helps people to exit vim as well :)
>
> Look, I love vim and use it constantly, but no reasonable person is
> going to hold it up as a good example of user-friendly software.
> According to Wikipedia, it was written in 1976 by Bill Joy, and
> computers have come a long way in the last 40 years. They are,
> broadly, easier to use now. For example, current versions of vim let
> you move around using new-fangled arrow keys, as if computers were
> supposed to cater to the lowest common denominator! Real men (like
> me) use hjkl to get around the screen, and look upon those who resort
> to the arrow keys as Johnny-come-latelys. Nevertheless, I can hardly
> fault vim/vi's concession to modernity in this regard.
>
> > Thinking this way for me psql's way is the intuitive one, because I know it.
> > Should I kindly ask Oracle to change their programs because I rather want to
> > use their software than reading their documentation?
>
> If you can convince Oracle to add support for \q to sqlplus, I say go
> for it. Actually, what I'd like even better is if you could convince
> them to add curses support, but I guess they would have done that 30
> years ago if they were inclined to do it.
>
> Really good software -- which sqlplus is not -- doesn't make it
> necessary to read the documentation. It helps you figure out how to
> use it as you go. When I fire up a new app on my iPhone, it generally
> gives me a clue how to use it. Sure, there's probably an app in the
> Apple Store someplace that is absolutely unusable without reading the
> documentation, but that's a bug, not a feature. It's expected that
> you'll have to read the documentation to figure out how to use the
> advanced features of any complicated program, but that doesn't mean we
> should make simple things complicated just to scare off users that
> aren't sufficiently committed to the Cause.
+1
Best,
David.
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778
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