Re: Notebook that auto-executes when opened?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97530] Re: Notebook that auto-executes when opened?
- From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
- Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:15:25 -0500 (EST)
On 3/14/09 at 5:38 AM, siegman at stanford.edu (AES) wrote: >>>On Mar 11, 4:25 am, Bill Rowe <readn... at sbcglobal.net> wrote: >>But this doesn't change the fact Mathematica implements a >>programming language which while being heavily orientated to >>mathematics is general purpose. As such, the user is expected to >>know what they are doing and "Are you sure?" warnings are not >>appropriate. >Many other users seem to find that warnings like this have "saved >their bacon" on more than one occasion, and many, many other >high-quality software products seem to contain such warnings. You are missing the point. There is a fundamental difference in say Illustrator and a programming language. With a program like Illustrator, the expectation is you are editing or creating a document interactively. Here, dialogs that warn before doing something that cannot be recovered from are reasonable. The same would be true for Mathematica *if* the only usage mode of Mathematica was a similar interactive mode. But Mathematica implements a general programming language. Such warnings add overhead any program created and halt the program for user interaction. Neither of these outcomes are desired in a programming language. So, similar warnings in a programming language are not at all reasonable. The particular function that started this sub-thread was DeleteFile. Surely, there can be no doubt as to the intent of this function. I see no need to ask a user "Are you sure?" with such a clearly descriptive name. Frankly, there is no viable way to protect a user who would carelessly use DeleteFile. For a careless/inattentive user, a dialog asking "Are you sure?" gets a click on the OK/Yes button with no real thought. And the end result is precisely the same.