Stupid little iota of an idea

foobar foo at bar.com
Sun Feb 13 01:15:39 PST 2011


Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

> On 2/11/11 7:07 AM, foobar wrote:
> > Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> I don't find the name "iota" stupid.
> >>
> >> Andrei
> >
> > Of course _you_ don't. However practically all the users _do_ find it
> > poorly named, including other developers in the project.. This is the
> > umpteenth time this comes up in the NG and incidentally this is the
> > only reason I know what the function does.
> >
> > If the users think the name is stupid than it really is. That's how
> > usability works and the fact the you think otherwise or that it might
> > be more accurate mathematically is really not relevant. If you want
> > D/Phobos to be used by other people besides yourself you need to
> > cater for their requirements.
> 
> Not all users dislike iota, and besides arguments ad populum are 
> fallacious. Iota rocks. But have at it - vote away, and I'll be glad if 
> a better name for iota comes about.
> 
> Andrei

Usability seems to be Achilles' heel of D and is a recurrent theme on the NG. Usability cannot be mathematically deduced even though you seem to try hard to do just that. 
This reminds me the story of a Google designer that quit the company, being frustrated by the engineering mind-set of the company. He gave many amusing examples of a complete lack of understanding of design principals such as choosing the shade of blue by doing a "scientific" comparison of a thousand different shades. 

could we for once put aside otherwise valid implementation concerns such as efficiency and mathematical correctness and treat usability as valid important concern? 
Could we for once accept that The users' opinion is not "fallacious" and have a user oriented design is not a bad thing or are we implementing for the sake of boosting ones own ego and nothing else? 
 


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