things humans are bad at: memorising specific sequences of words
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command line system:
you type something
you press enter
computer respondsyes, search engines, chatbots, intrractive fiction, databases and programming language REPLs all count.
you might quibble that something like bash is able to launch programs, modify the file system, etc; but technically, aside from search engines, sort of, so do all the others
mac spotlight. the control+p command palette in sublime text and vs code. Aza Raskin’s Enso.
But i would totally argue that a search engine like google remembering your activity and using it as context for future searches counte as modifying the state of a system.
Because so many people are only used to exactly one command line system, they overfit their mental definition to the exact shape that one takes; which to me seems like a kind of mental amputation; you’ve cut off the part of your brain that would have been able to imagine a better design for a command line interface
POSIX internals is second nature to us software engineers, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows bash, readline, and one or two ansi escape codes.
> and emacs
of course
> of course
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things humans are bad at: memorising specific sequences of words
things humans are good at: navigating spaces, finding objects within those spaces, interacting with objects in ways suggested by the object’s appearance and reactions
things linux is good at: making people memorise specific sequences of not quite real words, punctuations, and syntaxes
things linux is bad at: providing humans with coherent, consistent and stable spaces to navigate, or objects with appearances or reactions that suggest their function
@bri7 the FM is just a specific sequence of words that RT-ing is intended to partially memorize -
@bri7 the FM is just a specific sequence of words that RT-ing is intended to partially memorize
@apophis excellent point
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@bri7
How long is that manpage!? -
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@bri7 @kirtai i was honestly actually surprised that bash *had* a manpage because i thought that they were for, like, relatively quick guides for stuff because you couldn't be expected to just... remember all that, hit Q and do your thing
but i guess this was made for folks who had a better affordance for writing things down in physical notebooks or printing stuff out -
@bri7 @kirtai i was honestly actually surprised that bash *had* a manpage because i thought that they were for, like, relatively quick guides for stuff because you couldn't be expected to just... remember all that, hit Q and do your thing
but i guess this was made for folks who had a better affordance for writing things down in physical notebooks or printing stuff out -
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@lispi314 @oblomov @apophis none of these is really the point i am getting at with OP.
Text adventure games have an interface in which the goal of a puzzle is often “guess the exact correct word”
point and click adventure games are a slight improvement but often it just replaces guess the word with guess which pixel to click, or guess which item to use on which pixel
these are examples of *pointless* difficulty. we gain
nothing
in terms of expressivity or power by forcing people to play guessing games with the UI
The alternative is to make all affordances visible, discoverable, and reliably findable within a space; Don’t make people guess what is possible: sh
show users the list of possibilities, as objects that suggest visibly what their function is.
let people interact directly with those objects.
the efficiency you think you get from a CLI is an illusion
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@lispi314 @oblomov @apophis none of these is really the point i am getting at with OP.
Text adventure games have an interface in which the goal of a puzzle is often “guess the exact correct word”
point and click adventure games are a slight improvement but often it just replaces guess the word with guess which pixel to click, or guess which item to use on which pixel
these are examples of *pointless* difficulty. we gain
nothing
in terms of expressivity or power by forcing people to play guessing games with the UI
The alternative is to make all affordances visible, discoverable, and reliably findable within a space; Don’t make people guess what is possible: sh
show users the list of possibilities, as objects that suggest visibly what their function is.
let people interact directly with those objects.
the efficiency you think you get from a CLI is an illusion
-
@lispi314 @oblomov @apophis none of these is really the point i am getting at with OP.
Text adventure games have an interface in which the goal of a puzzle is often “guess the exact correct word”
point and click adventure games are a slight improvement but often it just replaces guess the word with guess which pixel to click, or guess which item to use on which pixel
these are examples of *pointless* difficulty. we gain
nothing
in terms of expressivity or power by forcing people to play guessing games with the UI
The alternative is to make all affordances visible, discoverable, and reliably findable within a space; Don’t make people guess what is possible: sh
show users the list of possibilities, as objects that suggest visibly what their function is.
let people interact directly with those objects.
the efficiency you think you get from a CLI is an illusion
-
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@kirtai @bri7 @oblomov @apophis That being said, there's a limit to expressivity of features that can be had without some degree of user-internalized model of operations.
At some point actually explaining all the things at once becomes sensory overload and explaining them separately in sequence becomes in itself overwhelming or overly tedious.
Dynamic systems have a much easier time of things here for obvious reasons, but user model & skill has to develop at some point for some things. -
@kirtai @bri7 @oblomov @apophis That being said, there's a limit to expressivity of features that can be had without some degree of user-internalized model of operations.
At some point actually explaining all the things at once becomes sensory overload and explaining them separately in sequence becomes in itself overwhelming or overly tedious.
Dynamic systems have a much easier time of things here for obvious reasons, but user model & skill has to develop at some point for some things. -
@bri7 @lispi314 @oblomov @apophis
Actually here they are.- Rigel's Revenge: Text adventure: Required the exact phrase "introduce bomb".
- The Price of Magik: Text adventure: Required the exact phrase "Bat, take wheel". Get does not work here despite being a synonym of "take" for the entire rest of the game.
- Beneath a Steel Sky: Point and click: Required you to notice a single pixel lightswitch in a textured background in order to pass one of the last rooms in the game.
It's been, what, thirty years since I even looked at any of these and I still remember them with annoyance.
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@bri7 @lispi314 @oblomov @apophis
Actually here they are.- Rigel's Revenge: Text adventure: Required the exact phrase "introduce bomb".
- The Price of Magik: Text adventure: Required the exact phrase "Bat, take wheel". Get does not work here despite being a synonym of "take" for the entire rest of the game.
- Beneath a Steel Sky: Point and click: Required you to notice a single pixel lightswitch in a textured background in order to pass one of the last rooms in the game.
It's been, what, thirty years since I even looked at any of these and I still remember them with annoyance.
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@kirtai@tech.lgbt @bri7@social.treehouse.systems @oblomov@sociale.network @apophis@yourwalls.today Regarding the following:
show users the list of possibilities, as objects that suggest visibly what their function is.
let people interact directly with those objects.
which-key-mode (github) kinda does that, it even has full mouse-over description without requiring configuration and click interaction.
It isn't enabled by default but I think that this suggestion might address that.
It's a bit unfortunate it took this long for these to come into existence (they are not perfect, and some limitations in rendering cannot be fixed without something like this), but they have.
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@bri7 @lispi314 @oblomov @apophis
Actually here they are.- Rigel's Revenge: Text adventure: Required the exact phrase "introduce bomb".
- The Price of Magik: Text adventure: Required the exact phrase "Bat, take wheel". Get does not work here despite being a synonym of "take" for the entire rest of the game.
- Beneath a Steel Sky: Point and click: Required you to notice a single pixel lightswitch in a textured background in order to pass one of the last rooms in the game.
It's been, what, thirty years since I even looked at any of these and I still remember them with annoyance.
@kirtai @bri7 @lispi314 @apophis I remember pixel hunting being the bane of some classic LucasArts game too! Compounded by the need to use a specific Look command to do it, too.
And I remember Heart of the Alien (sequel to Another World/Out of this World), a platformer, also had a bomb placement that require a specific sequence of movement keys to do. Reading the manual was the only way to know.
(“bat, take the wheel” is a specific idiomatic expressions, I'll allow it.)
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