ralph@utcsrgv.UUCP (ralph hill) (08/23/83)
I just read ...!houxm!mel's flame about the DEC Rainbow 100.
I largly agree with what he said, but disagree with the way he
said it.
He blames the problems on ergonomicists (sp? is it even a word?).
I think this blame is miss placed.
When I was starting out looking for summer programming jobs in
1977, I found many people claiming that their shops where into
"Structured Programming" in a big way. Most of them did not have the
foggiest idea what structured programming was. Most loved the use of
gotos in their 3000 line Fortran subroutines, but "structured programming"
was the latest buzz-word....
Last fall I saw a user friendly array processor. Just what the ____ is
that?
Last month I saw "ergonomically" designed puck for a tablet at SIGGRAPH.
It was worse than the junk we have. I told the salesman that I thought
it was junk, and he gave immediately changed the party line to "marketting
presure design", not "ergonomic design."
The moral: "user friendly" and "ergonomic design" are the lastest
buzz-words. Most the the stuff out there that claims to be isn't.
Don't blame the ergonomic engineers. They didn't design it. Some guy
who took a 2 day crash course did.
I think houxm!mel has the right idea. Identify the good parts and the bad
parts, then flame on to the manufacturer. But remember, every one is
not the same, we need a combination of good design, and a lot of options.
-------------------
Ralph Hill CSRG University of Toronto
ARPANet utcsrgv!ralph@UW-BEAVER
UUCP cornell ihnp4 ubc-vision linus floyd allegra uw-beaver >!utcsrgv!ralph
-or- decvax research duke cwruecmp >!utzoo!utcsrgv!ralph