Plip's Weblog

# re: Spectrum of Knowledge

I think this is rubbish... stateless development is harder than windows development. Win forms are trivial in VS.NET.

I haven't tried wpf yet, but I would say that web site development is harder than win forms.

# re: Spectrum of Knowledge

I'd second that .. far too much going on in Web development compared to WinForms.  

As a web developer it would be how you see it, but WinForms is "easy as" in comparison to building a web app (Statelessness being the main crunch factor).  You need to know another language to do simple things in web development that are native to a WinForms app (particularly client-side events).

HTML's reach to so many developer's (and their dogs) is nothing to do with ease, it was simply that the web became a worldwide thing (and a lot of people sprang up in web development because of the amount of money being thrown around amongst dot-coms).

I think from a user perspective, most are as familiar with windows applications as web-sites.  The major difference it that there is very little consistency across web-sites with regards to user interface, a lot less-so than winfoms apps, and that confuses a lot of new users.

# Spectrum of Knowledge? No...Landscape of Knowledge

Phil writes about the Spectrum of Knowledge...I've put together something similar for Knowledge of

# re: Spectrum of Knowledge

People are most comfortable with what they are used to.  A UI should be transparent to the task, i.e. enable the task to be performed without drawing the users attention to itself.  Transparency is helped by good design, and the more advanced technologies give us more design options; but neither design nor technology is actually necessary to achieve UI transparency.  Habit does that.  Repeat a task enough times, and it becomes automatic, becomes transparent.

Becomes a limitation, as people will understandably resist the extra work needed if the UI changes, and thus becomes non-transparent again.  It may be less effort for them once the new habits have formed, but the old ones will die hard (and noisily!).

I read once (possibly in one of Henry Petroski's excellent books) about USA farmers buying their first Model T Ford.  Many a cow came a cropper (ow: that pun *hurt* :-)) when the farmer, suddenly faced by a curious bovine, automatically hauled back on the steering wheel, as if they were holding reins.