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Re: Re: "Do What I Mean" - a suggestion for improving

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg97081] Re: [mg97048] Re: "Do What I Mean" - a suggestion for improving
• From: peter <plindsay.0 at gmail.com>
• Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 04:51:54 -0500 (EST)
• References: <200902281142.GAA16641@smc.vnet.net> <godm42$46k$1@smc.vnet.net>

well, if you make mathematica *too* easy - everyone's going to be using it.
Then where will we all be ?
Peter

2009/3/4 AES <siegman at stanford.edu>

> In article <godm42$46k$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
>  David Bakin <davidbak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > DrMajorBob,
> >
> > I think you're missing the point here - and actually, this is exactly the
> > point that AES keeps banging on.  "It's up to a user to write what he
> means"
> > is small comfort to a user, especially one new to Mathematica, who
> doesn't
> > know how to express what he means.
>
> and can't **easily and quickly** track down that information, in
> documentation that's **matched to his or her needs**.
>
>
> > "DWIM" is a tongue-in-cheek name, not to be taken literally.  It is just
> a
> > name for an meta-analysis feature that inspects the user's input and
> > proposes similar input forms that may be closer to what the user has in
> > mind, based on a database of common errors.
>
> Right.
>
> Given the sophistication of everything else that Wolfram does, I assume
> that it has always done a massive amount of sophisticated user testing,
> in which it presents its (soft)wares to a wide variety of different
> kinds of users, and observes and studies what errors they commonly make
> -- right?
>
> (At least it's my understanding that many other companies do this kind
> of thing, with whatever kind of wares they vend -- right?)
>
> So, the above-mentioned "database of common errors" already exists --
> right?
>
>


-- 
Peter Lindsay