🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <58346@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:

   I guess I'm not understanding the point here: if it is a
   zero-creativity, unimportant nobrainer, then why would anyone take
   Lotus's?  If it is so easy to invent, and implement, your own, why not
   just do it and not use someone else's?

For compatibility -- use-consistency.  Coming up with different file
storage formats for a class of files isn't all the difficult either.
Aren't you glad everybody who writes a programme which stores text
files doesn't use their own format to do so?

You are probably well aware of the way people respond to the learning
curve of adapting to very different methods of accomplishing the very
same thing.  If you develop something for a market that already has an
extremely strong following for a competitor then you've got one more
hurdle to overcome -- making your product so much totally, undeniably
better that people will switch to it despite the foreign interface and
the need to relearn methods to accomplish what they already could do
with another programme.  Surely you know that the average computer
user -- and most people here could probably not be called that --
isn't that inclined to try out new programmes, that they are paying
hundreds of dollars for, when they already know of one that works and
how to use it.  Classes are given on the use of particular programmes,
making access to programmes with similar interfaces all the greater
for the end user.

There are plenty of valid reasons to use a similar interface to a
mechanism which don't have anything to do with laziness or lack of
creativity or desire on the part of a designer.  I know several
people, actually, who think that Emacs is a better editor (and more)
than vi but who still haven't taken the leap to learn it.  Once they
do, how many will still also want to us vi-mode in Emacs because that
uses so many of the editing commands with which they are familiar?
Note that this issue in particular has virtually nothing to do, from
the user end, with proprietary vs free software and potential capital
losses on the part of any producer, nor on the amount of effort
developers spent on coming up with the interfaces to their programmes.
Yet it does deal directly with how users react to multiple interface
choices and their established knowledge base.