In article <4d337983$0$29983$c3e8da3$54964...@news.astraweb.com>, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 07:18:16 -0800, Adam Skutt wrote: > >[...] > >I'm afraid I found most of your post hard to interpret, because you >didn't give sufficient context for me to understand it. You refer to "his >proposed widget set", but with no clue as to who he is, or what the >widget set is, or what essential widgets you continue missing. I can >guess "he" is rantingrick, but am not sure -- there's only so much of his >time-wasting I can read before reaching for the killfile. Rantingrick >believes he is doing us a service by haranguing us incessantly into >scratching *his* poorly thought-out itches, regardless of practicality or >actual need. > >But putting that aside, I'd like to comment on a few points: > >[...] >> If the situation isn't >> the same on your computer then your application usage is highly unusual >> or you don't understand what widgets are used to construct your >> applications. You've just told me that Python would no longer be >> suitable for constructing the majority of GUI applications on the >> planet. > >No, that does not follow. Unless "he" (I'll assume it is rantingrick) has >proposed hunting down and destroying all third-party GUI tool sets, what >you've been told is that *one specific* tool set is unsuitable for >constructing the majority of GUI apps.
Actually it was me. Those guys don't even know how to attribute or quote. >[...] >> Really, if you believe the case to be otherwise, I truly believe you >> aren't paying attention to your own computer(s), or don't understand how >> the applications you use are constructed. What's out there isn't >> interesting, it's what people use that's interesting, and people tend to >> use GUIs that are moderately to highly complicated. > >Well, true, but people tend to *use* the parts of the GUIs that are >simple and basic. Not only do the big complicated apps get all the press >even when they are actually a niche product (everyone knows about >Photoshop, but more people use MS Paint) but it's a truism that most >people use something like 20% of the functionality of big, complicated >GUI apps. Most people use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice for little more >than text editing with formatting. > >It's easy for power users to overestimate how much of their complicated >GUIs are actually used by the average user. Or even the *above* average >user. Or even for the support of other packages, I gave the bluetooth example. I think the use of Python for e.g. configuration of packages is quite common. > >I suspect that a variation of Zipf's Law probably holds for GUI >complexity -- if you rank the widgets in order of most to least commonly >used, I expect that you'll see actual use drop away rapidly and at an >accelerated rate. E.g. the widget in second place might be used roughly >half as often as the widget in first place place, the widget in third >place one third as often, the widget in fourth place one quarter as >often, and so forth. That is the point I wanted to make. >-- >Steven Groetjes Albert -- -- Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters. albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
