Iconitis

[Charlie Geyer]

In article <11555 at lanl.gov> jlg at lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:

> My major objection with icons is that often I know very well what I want
> to do, but I can't do it without walking down some menu.  This requires
> that I use the mouse, move to the right place to bring up the desired
> menu, move to the selected item, etc..  But, since I already KNOW what
> I want to do, what I really need is to type in a short command!  The
> icon interface simply slows down experienced users.

Much worse than that.  The main defect of any menu-driven application
whether it uses mice and icons or not is that it is not programmable
and will do nothing not thought of by the original programmer, who
probably had very little idea what you want done.

Emacs, vi, sed, awk, and the like are infinitely more valuable than any
dumb editor no matter how "user-friendly."  They can often be easily
used to do things that in other environments would require a new 
applications program be written, which would take months instead of
minutes.  And will be done right instead of wrong.

Dumb applications are suitable only for novices.