I have been noticing that the issues of "efficient, simple, easy" are
not always synonymous with "Beginner-friendly." I was wondering if
beginner-friendly applications which fail in the "efficient, simple,
and easy" department, are more harmful in the long run, than
applications which fail in the former, but succeed in the latter.
Opinions, anyone?

Of course, I imagine a case could be made for the combination of both
of these being the best option, but I wonder if this is actually
possible? That is, are these two attributes to some extent mutually
exclusive in their extremes?
--
Aaron Hsu <aaron.hsu@sacrificumdeo.net>

"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he
could do only a little." - Edmund Burke

Aaron Hsu <aaron.hsu@sacrificumdeo.net> wrote:
> I have been noticing that the issues of "efficient, simple, easy" are
> not always synonymous with "Beginner-friendly." I was wondering if
> beginner-friendly applications which fail in the "efficient, simple,
> and easy" department, are more harmful in the long run, than
> applications which fail in the former, but succeed in the latter.
> Opinions, anyone?

Beginner-friendly applications are good for beginners, and your
"efficient, simple, easy" (I'd add "powerful") applications are
more suited to experts.

There is nothing wrong with beginner software, especially when the
things you want to do are comparatively simple - and in many cases, what
we want to do is comparatively simple.

However, an expert will usually value efficiency and power over
'friendliness'. I'd compare the OpenBSD 'vi /etc/...' and the Red Hat[1]
'find the wizard in the menu' approach here. Nowadays, if I'm on a
RH/Fedora box, I open an xterm and vi before doing anything else.
However, my *nix 'career' started on Mandrake, which was pretty RH-ish
in its love for wizards. Those wizards worked well enough to allow me to
completely switch to Mandrake within a couple of months - OpenBSD would
have been a much harder nut to crack, and I'm glad I didn't have to do
that at that point.

So no, I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with easy
interfaces. I used them when I liked them, and switched to more
efficient, powerful, and concise interfaces later on.

Also note that friendliness and power are not necessarily opposed: while
a powerful general-purpose editor will always be somewhat difficult to
use at full power [2], something like the change of isakmpd.conf to
ipsecctl makes things easier and less error-prone for both the expert
and the novice.

> Of course, I imagine a case could be made for the combination of both
> of these being the best option, but I wonder if this is actually
> possible? That is, are these two attributes to some extent mutually
> exclusive in their extremes?

In their extremes, certainly.

However, solid software is likely to be better along both axes than
low-quality code, and there is something to be said for having separate
newbie-friendly and powerful interfaces.

Joachim

[1] Red Hat, of course, is not alone here.
[2] Although there's some merit to the viewpoint that vi is
particularly hostile. Yes, I do use vi(m) myself.