From kragen@dnaco.net Fri Jul 3 13:52:03 1998 Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 13:52:02 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: Laura Bettag cc: jweirich@one.net, clug-user@clug.org Subject: Re: Good Unix Beginner's Book In-Reply-To: <359D14DD.E517A0DD@phoenixrc.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 232 Status: O X-Status: On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Laura Bettag wrote: > One of my favorite first books was "UNIX for the Impatient" > by Paul W Abrahams & Bruce A. Larson (Addison-Wesley > Publishing Company - ISBN 0-201-55703-7). I know it's still > around because I saw it on the shelf at MicroCenter > recently. Have all of you read "The Design of Everyday Things", by Don Norman? (It used to be called "The Psychology of Everyday Things", but that caused it to frequently end up in the psychology section, not the design section.) He makes the very good point that something as simple to operate as a door should not require an instruction manual -- even a one-word one that says PUSH. It should simply be obvious how to open the door. I believe the same thing is true of computer systems. While there are certainly some tasks that inherently require thought and research, the following tasks are not among them: - logging in to your computer - seeing what files you have and how big they are - backing up some of them - connecting to the Internet (you should be able to put in your ISP's phone number, your account name, and password, and click "go") - reorganizing your files - finding the files that contain the information on a particular topic - reading documentation (while it may require thought and research to understand it, it shouldn't require thought and research to find it!) - drawing a picture - writing a letter (writing a book will obviously require some thought anyway) - installing the OS (although no one has managed to make this easy yet) - reading and writing email (including attaching files and opening files other people have sent you) - browsing the web - printing things (from the Web, things you've written, etc.) - putting stuff up on your Web site - scanning things in I also think that there should be stepping-stones between tasks like these and scripting. What do you think? Kragen