4 ms·

You can do very complex things with a hammer, but learning how to use a hammer is very simple. The key is that a hammer does exactly the same things as it has

by Qz 16y ago

You can do very complex things with a hammer, but learning how to use a hammer is very simple. The key is that a hammer does exactly the same things as it has always done, and the nails don't get fussy if your hammer doesn't have the latest driver update.

decode 16y ago
I'm not sure you can do very complex things with a hammer. You can really only hit things and pry things. Those are very simple tasks. Of course, combining those simple tasks in complex ways will give you complex results. But then you've moved all of the complexity out of the tool and into your head, and beginners cannot do these things. To go back to my instrument analogy, you can play a 2-hour song with 10,000 notes on a kazoo. But, you're only playing one note at a time. On a piano, you can play many notes at once, playing some simultaneously and others with partial overlaps, changing the sustain and timbre of the notes as you go. The kazoo, while it creates a song that is a complicated whole, does not perform tasks as complicated as the piano. This is what I'm getting at with my statement about software interfaces.
- Qz 16y ago
  I don't want to get too off track on analogies, but on a piano you only play one note at a time. A piano is just a set of kazoos that match octaves, set in a row, and you press a key instead of blowing into the kazoo. But the interface for the piano is dead simple -- every key can be pressed the same way, and there's levers at the bottom which I never really understood :). So yes, the complication of a piano comes from what you can do with the multiple simple interfaces, not from the complexity of the interface -- see where I'm going? On a computer however, there's complexity in whatever the task is, and that's inherent. You can't fight that. But you can fight the complexity in the interface itself. There's been plenty of articles on HN about interface inconsistencies. The windows 'system tray' is particularly notorious, where basically every single icon does entirely different things depending on whether you left click, right click, middle click, double click, etc. Imagine a piano, where the notes hit by the keys are in a random order on every piano. And it's not a windows only problem -- interfaces are consistently inconsistent on every platform.
sprout 16y ago
>learning how to use a hammer is very simple How so? What are you learning how to do with the hammer? Pry up nails? Hammer nails? What thickness of nail should you use to go through a given board? How should the way you hold the nail differ depending on size of nail, size of board, working area? A hammer is not at all simple; it takes just as long to get the hang of than your average desktop app, if not longer.

by Qz 16y ago

decode 16y ago

I'm not sure you can do very complex things with a hammer. You can really only hit things and pry things. Those are very simple tasks. Of course, combining those simple tasks in complex ways will give you complex results. But then you've moved all of the complexity out of the tool and into your head, and beginners cannot do these things. To go back to my instrument analogy, you can play a 2-hour song with 10,000 notes on a kazoo. But, you're only playing one note at a time. On a piano, you can play many notes at once, playing some simultaneously and others with partial overlaps, changing the sustain and timbre of the notes as you go. The kazoo, while it creates a song that is a complicated whole, does not perform tasks as complicated as the piano. This is what I'm getting at with my statement about software interfaces.

Qz 16y ago
I don't want to get too off track on analogies, but on a piano you only play one note at a time. A piano is just a set of kazoos that match octaves, set in a row, and you press a key instead of blowing into the kazoo. But the interface for the piano is dead simple -- every key can be pressed the same way, and there's levers at the bottom which I never really understood :). So yes, the complication of a piano comes from what you can do with the multiple simple interfaces, not from the complexity of the interface -- see where I'm going? On a computer however, there's complexity in whatever the task is, and that's inherent. You can't fight that. But you can fight the complexity in the interface itself. There's been plenty of articles on HN about interface inconsistencies. The windows 'system tray' is particularly notorious, where basically every single icon does entirely different things depending on whether you left click, right click, middle click, double click, etc. Imagine a piano, where the notes hit by the keys are in a random order on every piano. And it's not a windows only problem -- interfaces are consistently inconsistent on every platform.

sprout 16y ago

>learning how to use a hammer is very simple How so? What are you learning how to do with the hammer? Pry up nails? Hammer nails? What thickness of nail should you use to go through a given board? How should the way you hold the nail differ depending on size of nail, size of board, working area? A hammer is not at all simple; it takes just as long to get the hang of than your average desktop app, if not longer.