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Armed and Dangerous Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life’s simple pleasures… |
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But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants ‘just a few minutes of your time, please – this won’t take long.’ Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time – and squawk for more!
—Lazarus Long
I have been thinking about UI design lately. With some help from my
friend Rob Landley, I’ve come up with a classification schema for the
levels at which users are willing to invest effort to build
competence.
The base assumption is that for any given user there is a maximum
cognitive load any given user is willing to accept [...]
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtle
delusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve of
a priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken of
ordinary human beings.
Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld series
of satirical fantasies. He is — and I don’t say this lightly, or
without having given [...]