I miss Norton Disk Doctor, not because I work on drive recovery but because it had an interface that respected the user’s intelligence. Every other storage-rel

I miss Norton Disk Doctor, not because I work on drive recovery but because it had an interface that respected the user’s intelligence. Every other storage-related system I’ve ever used either had inscrutable gibberish like: “Mode 5/7?” [Y] Or overly dumbed down questions like: Are you sure? [N] What am I sure about!? What is mode 5? Or is it 7? Both? What!? [1] Norton meanwhile had several paragraphs of text explaining what every decision meant. It explained concepts inline. It provided an explanation of the benefits and risks. It let you make an informed choice instead of just hitting Y over and over and hoping for the best. This kind of respect for the reader / user applies to all forms of technical writing such as manuals, user interfaces, blog articles, and API docs. Instead of trying to dumb down the text for a “lay” audience, try to educate all audiences to become more technical after having read and understood what you wrote. [1] That is verbatim from a Hitachi SAN array that was holding all of the data for a government department. The manual helpfully explained that this option toggles between mode 5/7 being either on or off. If you choose wrong the array will erase itself and kill your cat. Or neither of those things. Who knows?