jab@ritcv.UUCP (John A Biles) (08/18/83)
hose commands because someday the menus would
disappear, and at that time they would have to enter the commands on
their own.
We also made the thing slow (by misusing the curses package and
putting as much stuff on the screen as possible). The idea was that
the kiddies would get tired of seeing the same old explanations of the
commands all the time and would want to graduate to the "real" shell as
soon as possible. After all, that's what WE would do, right?
Well, you can guess what they did. They ignored the command
section of the screen and just waited patiently for all the verbage to
come rolling out at 1200 baud. After all they hadn't used a real computer
system before; they just thought all the garbage was normal. Even with
38 of them on a grunting and groaning 11/70 they would complain about how
long it took for a screen to fill up, but never ask how to avoid getting
the screens to look at.
We finally changed all their default shells to the Bourne shell
and told them that if they wanted to use the menus, they would have to
enter the command "msh" when they go logged in. Sure enough, a few diehards
kept suckling right up to the bitter end (no pun intended).
At the end of the course the kids reported that they liked the
menus and thought they should be used again. The kicker, though, was that
they seemed to think that the menus were NOT terribly helpful in learning
to use UN*X.
I'm not sure what we're going to do this year. We had a masters
project completed this summer that was an "efficient" menu shell that
looks promising, but I don't know if it or last year's "moron shell" or
just the good old vanilla Bourne shell will be used. Not my decision.
As far as experienced people using the moreon shell is concerned,
a faculty member returning from a year in IBM-land found it just great for
(re)learning UN*X. He weened himself in about a week or two, just like
a real professional.
I'm not sure what the moral to all this is. I guess it's safe to
say that experienced users know what they want and complain when they
don't get it, while novices take whatever is put on their plates because
they don't know any better. Oh well.
- Al Biles
Rochester Institute of Technology
{seismo,allegra}!rochester!ritcv!jab