Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Online book for usability

[Robin Farine]

On Thursday 24 June 2004 21.08, Tom Lord wrote:
>     > From: David Allouche <address@hidden>

>     > That is the reason why untagged-source files are now
>     > "precious" instead of "unrecognized". We may know that it
>     > is better to have "untagged-source unrecognized" because it
>     > catches mistakes, but many users just expect
>     > "untagged-source precious".
>
> That particular change to "precious" rather than "unrecognized"
> was probably a mistake.  It's a fix to a symptom, not the cause
> of the UI disconnect.  It's a bogus fix because it encourages
> misuse of the tool.  Since that change, I have sometimes found
> myself with revisions that are messed up because of that change. 
> I've gotten in the habit of remembering to change what
> `untagged-source' maps to in =tagging-method whenever I start a
> new tree: that's a habit that's born of compensating for the fact
> that the UI (after the change you mention) encourages a dangerous
> usage pattern.

Thank you.

I stopped arguing about this kind of changes that improve tla's 
usability long ago because it started to sound like the Old Man 
talking endlessly about the good old past and today's evil changes. 
Instead, I started my own tla wrapper that among other things runs
  sed -e s/^untagged-source precious/untagged-source unrecognized/ 
on {arch}/=tagging-method after init-tree.

> Part of what's going on with newbies is that when they use CVS or
> other systems, they often use them as "black boxes" and with very
> poor sense either of what's going on, or of what the tool is
> capable of.

Sometimes we forgot we even had to learn to drink, to walk, to use 
CVS,. We want tools that think and do the right thing, whatever the 
heck it might be. Just push the big red button there and the tool 
takes care of the rest. Error messages? They tell me that something 
went wrong, bad, the tool could not do its job, I am lost.

This reminds me the time when I started studying. The first C 
program. Yeah, "hello world". Some students were happy when the 
compiler ate the text without producing any of those annoying 
messages starting with "error: ". And after all, trying to execute 
the result could wait until next year.

One guy started with:

        int main()
        {
          Say hello world!
        }

And the insidious compiler replied something like:

        hello.c: In function `main':
        hello.c:3: error: `Say' undeclared (first use in this function)
        hello.c:3: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
        hello.c:3: error: for each function it appears in.)
        hello.c:3: error: parse error before "hello"

        Compilation exited abnormally with code 1

The guy noticed that there was a problem. He printed his program, 
the compiler output and went to seek help. Another guy, smart, gave 
him this ultimate but simple trick (it makes use of the C 
preprocessor but this subject had to be introduced the next week 
so ...):

        int main()
        {
        #if 0
          Say hello world!
        #endif
        }

        Compilation finished

Hurrah, it works!


In fact, it is just a matter of personal taste. Some prefer 
simplicity, some prefer correctness and some prefer beer.


Robin