Re: What is wrong with OO ?

[Tansel Ersavas <tansel@rase.com>]

Jon S Anthony wrote:
> 
> > Still I believe that the next generation will work predominantly with
> > pictures and will rarely revert to bulky chunks of text
> 
> Hmmmm, do you really think any attempt you try to provide for my first
> question will be any where near as light weight as "mountain"???????
> Take a look at the "byte-size" of even the simplest graphic in any
> representation you care to and compare it to a "corresponding textual
> description".

I remember similar discussions that took place when GUIs were first
introduced. However, it didn't change the fact that GUI dominated. When
CERN fist introduced the text based ancestor of Mosaic, it didn't really
motivate any users to participate until the hyper-media concept was
introduced. Rest is history. It is not the hyper-link concept that
started the web-mania. This was around before. It is the ability to
combine text, sound and images together to offer a whole. Same things
will happen, in fact already happening in the systems development area.
The first examples mostly suck, but they will be better, and will
eventually dominate.

One should also remember that text is a visual represenatation as well.
We have nice little icons that represent letters. So it is just one way
of pictorial representation. It is a fascinating evolution how we ended
up with text, and I enjoy reading about how iconic languages became
textual ones. This subject is very deep, and would start several
threads, so I'll keep quiet about it now.

I don't think that we can justify the graphical craze in measurable
terms such as of ease of use, or or ease of learning. Indeed, when the
icon based file interface first introduced in Lisa, there were a series
of tests with users about the ease of learning of this new approach. To
many people's surprise they didn't turn out to be faster to learn than
the other concepts when they were first introduced. Even error rates
came about the same. What was different, though, people's enjoyment of
the "little pictures" as they defined it. This enjoyment in turn
promoted wider use, and indirectly more efficient learning. Pictures are
sexier. They can immediately grab our attention. 

BTW I also sometimes watch with worry as GUIS dominate, because they
disadvantage one group of people, namely blind people. To the blind,
text is as meaningless as pictures unless it is converted to sound or
braille. However text can be converted to either of these mediums
easily, while GUIs can not be. The ideal solution is to keep the
development model independent of its views, and show it to people who
want to view it in text as text, pictures as pictures, or sound, and any
other views imaginable, and that lies in the core of some new systems we
are developing.

Tansel
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