Stupid little iota of an idea

Lutger Blijdestijn lutger.blijdestijn at gmail.com
Sun Feb 13 03:03:41 PST 2011


foobar wrote:

> 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?

first rule of usability: don't listen to users

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html





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