Computer Aided ...

I made no secret that I consider E.W. Dijkstra a very wise thinker and I take many of my ideas from him. One of the things I've been hesitant to accept from him at first is his abhorrence of the use computers. It's been at least 4 months maybe as much as six months since it dawned on me that I am indeed addicted to the use of computers. There's no other ways to talk about the excessive reliance on electronic communication (e.g. looking for emails more than once an hour), my habit of browsing meaningless content on the internet and, more importantly, my habit of relying on software tools when they ofter arguably little improvements on productivity and probably some awful deterioration also. I just started reading the book "In Praise of Slow" by Carl Honoré and went through the section where he describes how in capitalist societies we made of time a new god. In other words time is more in control of our life than we are. It makes for some very nice reflections but for now, I'll come back to my main topic. In a similar way, the computer has come to possess control over our work. I can't count anymore how many times a day I get annoyed and frustrated with how my computer is working against me. It goes from simple trivia like message boxes popping up while I am typing something and forcing me to respond immediately to the use of theorem provers that relays my job to a secondary place by taking the reins passing to the use of IDE that do not work and word processors that pretend to know better than me what I want to do. In some cases, this is plain condescending but in every cases is completely harmfu to productivityl and destroys my motivation. Recently, I bought a new tool that I am pretty satisfied with. As a word processor, it does not argue with me. As a theorem prover, it allows me to keep the reins and go where I want to go. As an language editor, it does not crash and does not ship with faulty libraries. Finally, it very rarely interrupts me in my work. I bought a fountain pen and, although I still use the computer in a pretty addicted fashion, I see a change happening and I can't see how it wouldn't be for the best. In any case, the feeling is one of pleasure and satisfaction. And now, for those who wonder when it interrupts me: it's when my cartridge of ink is empty and I store two in my pen so the replacement is a fairly short operation. I am now resolute to using computer as much as possible for communicating with my loved ones which are now very far away and to question every other necessity I feel of using a computer. This is far from done but I expect some nice results. As an aside, as a software developer I think I draw an important lesson. In the same way you should never be condescending toward your readership, you should not be either towards your users. If they use the computer, they should know what they want and you should not take the control from them. For example, when forms have to be filled, you should allow the user as much as possible to fill them in one go and possibly even in the order of his choice. A good example of a violation of this principle is the setup of Windows where installation sequences are interspersed with questions so the user has to sit through the whole process. Simon Hudon 12:55 AM on July 12th Zürich during a sleepless night