Computers for users not programmers

[Herman Rubin]

In article <1991Jan24.222501.7054 at research.canon.oz.au>, andy at research.canon.oz.au (Andy Newman) writes:
> In article <13985 at ganymede.inmos.co.uk> conor at inmos.co.uk (Conor O'Neill) writes:
> >A 'user' just wants to run applications.
> 
> Aren't you a computer user?
> 
> Give (non-programmer) ``users'' some credit ... a user who understands that
> they can construct their own applications by plugging together some tools
> in the correct order would want some easy mechanism to construct pipelines
> (and pipelines aren't the only model).

There are, unfortunately, some who want the software to do all their thinking
for them.  It is only those who can be called non-programmers.  Anyone who has
to put things together is already doing programming.

As andy points out, even a pipeline is a program.  One of the problems I have
with using "packages" is that they do not allow the combining of tools.
--
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin at l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)   {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!hrubin(UUCP)