Re: Woctave-another gui front end

[Sergei Steshenko]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>
> To: Nicholas Jankowski <address@hidden>
> Cc: Sergei Steshenko <address@hidden>; "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 3:52 PM
> Subject: Re: Woctave-another gui front end
> 
> On 4 December 2012 19:38, Nicholas Jankowski <address@hidden> wrote:
>>  That said, a GUI is a barrier to adoption. if for no other reason
>>  than people will say, "no gui?" and move on.
> 
> The people who want a GUI do not know any other way to interact with a
> programming environment. They typically know no other programming
> language than Matlab, so they have never tried to learn a text editor
> or environment that you can use to program elsewhere. They view typing
> commands into a command line as black magic. They furthermore barely
> even think of Matlab as a programming language at all.
> 
> It is futile to try to convince the people who want a GUI that they
> don't need one. They think they're too dumb to learn another way and
> they view non-GUI work as impossible black magic only the most expert
> programmers can achieve.
> 
> - Jordi G. H.
>

It makes no sense to service needs of such people. Scientific calculations 
require certain skill level; inability to learn a text editor and to work with 
a terminal emulator casts grave doubts the skill level is good enough.

...

A script can be written which starts, say, Notepad++ and the window titles will 
be "Enter your source here, Enter Octave commands here", etc.


Regards,
  Sergei.