[olpc-software] AbiWord, HIG

[Alan Kay]

Hi Alan --

Yes, and doctors used to bleed people and worse. However most of them 
stopped (and were stopped) when better practices emerged. In this case, the 
better practices were already around. I much prefer to be fulsome in my 
praise of people who did much better than average, like Engelbart, the 
Internet designers, etc.

As I said to Jim, I don't have any drive towards personal attacks, but I 
think we should be more comprehensive about how knowledge should be used. 
If you were born in 10,000BC with a 500 IQ you are still not going to be 
able to do much. Pop cultures are all about IQ and not about knowledge. 
Computing was on the path towards becoming a real field until it got 
distracted by the personal computer and Internet commercialization.

Cheers,

Alan

At 04:23 AM 3/16/2006, Alan Cox wrote:
>On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 04:34:50PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> > It's worth pondering just why large portions of the computer community
> > didn't build on the best designs (and still don't) ... This wouldn't be
> > tolerated in any real science or engineering discipline ...
>
>History, and your assertion is definitely not true in engineering. Take
>the railways for example. Rails are 4'8 3/4" apart. Way too narrow for
>best performance - why - because pre roman cart wheels were 4'8 3/4" apart
>primarily because thats the right width to fit around a horse.
>
>So if railway tracks are still defined by a pre-roman horses arse I don't 
>think
>you can be too hard on the early web people.
>
>There are endless examples like this in all industries caused by sound 
>economic
>decisions made at the time due to inter-operability requirements, switching
>costs and first mover advantages.
>
>Alan