[Gllug] How do they manage it? (IT recruitment agencies)

[Nix]

On Sat, 11 Aug 2001, Bruce Richardson stated:
> This is a failing of the computer industry, not the user.  No other
> technology makes such demands of the user or treats the user with such
> contempt.  You don't have to know how the internal combustion engine
> works to be a good driver (though a basic understanding of its concepts
> may make you a better driver).  Yet the computer industry puts users in
> much the same position as motorists from the beginning of the last
> century, who needed to be able to make intricate adjustments to their
> engines before they could even leave the garage.

No, they're placed in a worse position. The computer industry is in the
position that the motoring industry would have been in if they'd had to
invent much of engineering at the same time as the car --- i.e., much
more unreliable for much longer and with much more exposed complexity.

Yet the proprietary software industry hands users cars with the bonnets
welded shut and with useless diagnostics, in the full knowledge that
those engines are very likely to break down, and that when they do
there's nothing the user will be able to do.

(Here's one place where this hoary and crappy metaphor breaks down; if a
car suffers serious engine problems, people can die; but if an office PC
goes down there is no such danger. The continued --- admittedly marginal
--- existence of closed-source life-critical systems fills me with
amazement.)

-- 
`It's all about bossing computers around. Users have to say "please".
Programmers get to say "do what I want NOW or the hard disk gets it".'
                        -- Richard Heathfield on the nature of programming

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug