Comment History disputes your elitist misunderstandings (Score 1) 456
"the ordinary people will just use what they can of all of these things, mixing and matching the way they have always done."
Contrary to your elitist opinion, "ordinary" people can and will learn, if they want (or need) to. Additionally, some of the best programmers I know barely finished college (if at all).
There was a pre-Windows & pre-MS Office period, if you're old enough to remember. DOS users didn't believe in the "pretty" Mac OS because it was unrealistic for business use; Microsoft mimiced the Mac OS (circa 1984) to create Windows on top of a DOS-platform for PCs in 1987.
Having worked for GM during their migration from Harvard Graphics, Lotus 1-2-3, and WordPerfect to the both Windows 3.1 & MS Office in 1994 was painful--although the "old-timers" appreciated MS Word's adoption of WordPerfect's keystrokes. The operability of the "integrated" software was an effective marketing scam, as inter-operability between Word, PowerPoint, and Excel in the first release was unreliable (much improved over the past decade, but the first bundle sucked). Having dozens of diskettes to install for each upgrade (even MS Office 97 had 45 floppy disks) didn't ease the end user's immediate dislike for the new system, as it required hours of downtime to install the necessary programs, as well as weeks to learn to use Windows and a mouse (Solitaire was brilliant). The end users also had to waste time translating or recreating individual files which were already organised in their convenient DOS directories.
Most current integrations and upgrades now occur without the end user even realising it. RedHat does need to improve its GUI protocol for Linux to become more widespread, although you might want to review your knowledge of how things have always been.
--Old timer (born '72)
Contrary to your elitist opinion, "ordinary" people can and will learn, if they want (or need) to. Additionally, some of the best programmers I know barely finished college (if at all).
There was a pre-Windows & pre-MS Office period, if you're old enough to remember. DOS users didn't believe in the "pretty" Mac OS because it was unrealistic for business use; Microsoft mimiced the Mac OS (circa 1984) to create Windows on top of a DOS-platform for PCs in 1987.
Having worked for GM during their migration from Harvard Graphics, Lotus 1-2-3, and WordPerfect to the both Windows 3.1 & MS Office in 1994 was painful--although the "old-timers" appreciated MS Word's adoption of WordPerfect's keystrokes. The operability of the "integrated" software was an effective marketing scam, as inter-operability between Word, PowerPoint, and Excel in the first release was unreliable (much improved over the past decade, but the first bundle sucked). Having dozens of diskettes to install for each upgrade (even MS Office 97 had 45 floppy disks) didn't ease the end user's immediate dislike for the new system, as it required hours of downtime to install the necessary programs, as well as weeks to learn to use Windows and a mouse (Solitaire was brilliant). The end users also had to waste time translating or recreating individual files which were already organised in their convenient DOS directories.
Most current integrations and upgrades now occur without the end user even realising it. RedHat does need to improve its GUI protocol for Linux to become more widespread, although you might want to review your knowledge of how things have always been.
--Old timer (born '72)
