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Re: Usages Messages

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg94831] Re: Usages Messages
  • From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
  • Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:05:02 -0500 (EST)
  • Organization: Stanford University
  • References: <gj2cat$fsr$1@smc.vnet.net>

In article <gj2cat$fsr$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
 "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net> wrote:

> 
> Usage messages are extremely useful but they have gotten caught up and
> tangled in the evolution of Mathematica so that in trying to do too much
> they end up doing too little.
> 

Hmmm -- David, I think you might be learning!

Might this thought be broadened to the idea that _Mathematica itself_, 
having gotten "caught and entangled" in an objective of trying to be 
able to do, not just "too much", but more or less _everything_ anyone 
might want to do within a single program, has evolved into a system 
that, as a result, ends up being hard to use to do almost anything?

[E.g., syntax and command structure so massive and complex as to be 
almost unlearnable, unsatisfactory user interface, massive but still 
mostly unsatisfactory user documentation, innumerable "gotchas" and 
unexpected interactions between commands, and so on.]


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