I love my job

[brrm]

In the space of two days, I have met Philip Pullman and Richard Dreyfuss, both through work. I don't think I had any idea when I applied for Just Another IT Support Job, quite how varied it would turn out to be. I don't even mind when events mean I get home at 9pm - the worst part is having to cook rather than flop. And, while we're name dropping, I can add Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Jimmy 'wikipedia' Wales, Bill Thompson and Dave Farber to the list - not to mention the deputy director of the National Crime Squad. Next stop, Bill Gates and iSteve!

Comments

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

I'm jealous. The closest I've come is meeting the ex-boss of Borland.

[frodomorris.livejournal.com]

Have to lay claim to Avie Tevanien, Bertrand Serlet, Randal Schwartz, Guido van Rossum and Jordan K. Hubbard myself. I met Ted Nelson too and thought he was talking a load of rubbish. I'd had enough beer to tell him that, too :-)

[brrm.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm in no doubt that Ted talks sense - the question is whether he is too late to reverse the tide of, well, everyone.

[frodomorris.livejournal.com]

When I saw him talk, he was telling us that computer interfaces should work the way he likes because that's obviously the way they should work. It's the arrogance that the way you or I want to use a computer is the same way that everyone else wants to use a computer "and any right-thinking person can see that" which gets on my wick. Take something as simple as the OS X dock - I happen to like the dock, am used to it and can work with it. However I've made five configuration changes (not counting adding/removing icons) of which two are not even exposed through the UI; clearly the way I like to launch programs is not the same way that a bunch of HCI studies told someone in Cupertino people like to launch programs. Some people don't like the dock paradigm at all, and would prefer to be using a textual interface, a menu system, a collapsible icon strip, LCARS, whatever. So where is the inherently correct way to do that?

He also did a shortlist of all the "neat things I've thought of which computer UIs should be able to do" which included a bunch of stuff computer UIs are already able to do. However when I told him about a particular example and gave a particular example of a UI which used that technique, he told me that it couldn't do that. You've got to have a particular brand of arrogance in order for facts to be meddling irritations which get in the way of your more important work...