Re: OT: Getting people to use tools

[runrig]

I just don't get it. I'm trying to make their lives easier, and nobody wants to be helped.

I'm reminded of a quote from Garth of Wayne's World:

We fear change

I'm convinced its universally true. People are resistant to change, even if it saves them hours or days of work. At work here, when we make code changes, they often have to be applied to several different custom code bases, and these changes were being done manually and could take days hours or days of work (forget for the moment that we should be using CVS). So I wrote some scripts utilizing diff and patch (yea Larry!) to turn hours of work into minutes or days into hour(s).

I documented them, I wrote step by step instructions, and found they weren't being used until I stepped through the procedures with each programmer until they finally saw the light. The only programmer that was still not using the scripts worked offsite (and is no longer in the picture anyway). We only have a few developers here, so this strategy may not work with you :-)

[Aristotle]

Definitely I agree with this. Despite knowing better, I didn't make the transition to various better tools for a long time simply because, well, it's a lot to learn. I knew the outcome would be favourable, but I couldn't make myself do it - at least, "not now - later".

Makeshifts last the longest.