There is nothing new about straightjacketing computing into an "everyday household objects" metaphor. As in, "the desktop," for instance. It is a very old idea which simply refuses to die.
And here is what the late Erik Naggum had to say about "user friendliness," the ancient disease which gave us MS BOB:
"the clumsiness of people who have to engage their brain at every step is unbearably painful to watch, at least to me, and that's what the novice-friendly software makes people do, because there's no elegance in them, it's just a mass of features to be learned by rote."
"The Novice has been the focus of an alarming amount of attention in the computer field. It is not just that the preferred user is unskilled, it is that the whole field in its application rewards novices and punishes experts. What you learn today will be useless a few years hence, so why bother to study and know /anything/ well?"
There is nothing new about straightjacketing computing into an "everyday household objects" metaphor. As in, "the desktop," for instance. It is a very old idea which simply refuses to die.
And here is what the late Erik Naggum had to say about "user friendliness," the ancient disease which gave us MS BOB:
"the clumsiness of people who have to engage their brain at every step is unbearably painful to watch, at least to me, and that's what the novice-friendly software makes people do, because there's no elegance in them, it's just a mass of features to be learned by rote."
(http://tinyurl.com/ya86frv)
"The Novice has been the focus of an alarming amount of attention in the computer field. It is not just that the preferred user is unskilled, it is that the whole field in its application rewards novices and punishes experts. What you learn today will be useless a few years hence, so why bother to study and know /anything/ well?"
(http://tinyurl.com/yjfpbyq)