in reply to Re: GUIs Considered Harmful by Tom Christiansen
in thread GUIs Considered Harmful by Tom Christiansen
I read somewhere about psychologic research how users are learning and remembers new knowledge. Result was, that we have two modes of memory: "learning" and "recalling".
When in learning mode, it's easier to work with fully described text info. Easier to use menu, and even maybe RTFM... ;-)
In "recall" mode, when we want to find something we learned before. Any association works quicker than text. So you can recall by music, picture, position of fingers...
I remember after couple months not able to work with computer and my favorite editor, I could not recall how to do some actions. However, when I put my fingers on the keyboard, fingers knew what to do. Same with icons - they do not make sense first, so we have ToolTips in windows (yellow bubles with help text) - but hey will appear only if you are not sure if you want to click, for a seconnd hovering mouse over the button.
I guess this shows that GUI is not all bad. Sure I like CLI for tools, and non-mouse commands (keyborad shortcuts) for actions I use often. But I like I can explore menu I do not use quite often. If interface is complex, you may not want to expose all complexities in flat CLI. System of hierarchical menus, grouping relevant commands together, might be preferable.
And yes, I like all my keyboard shortcuts and scripts to save clicks on GUI - but only for actions I perform qften enough.
pmas
To make errors is human. But to make million errors per second, you need a computer.
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