From: Dave Long (dl@silcom.com)
Date: Tue Sep 26 2000 - 16:55:38 PDT
I visited a radiology department recently,
and was reminded of how much real offices
run on informal annotations: sticky notes
with settings or warnings, taped signs of
the latest deltas for procedures, pencil
and paper as tools for efficient workflow
rather than instruments for bureaucratic
tortures, etc.
As users of software, however, we lose
the ability to help our colleagues (or
our future forgetful selves) via simple
immediate annotations. If I wish to put
a note that will appear when the "Print
Setup..." dialog does, stating "don't
select paisley paper -- it shreds all
jobs in the output tray [DL 26sep00]",
I will be bummed.
At the source level, no one can seriously
expect developers to work in a language
without comments -- yet we don't give our
end users any equivalent way to do their
work, or working around. Why not?
-Dave
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