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In article <01GXC4UD52EA000HT1 -at- camins -dot- Camosun -dot- BC -dot- CA>,
Peter Montgomery <MONTGOMERY -at- camins -dot- camosun -dot- bc -dot- ca> wrote:
> Ability to get a software company to make things even more simplistic
> for you, so that no thought on your part is required.
Knowledge of and comfort with computers comprehensive enough
to deal with any user-interface gaffe, inexplicable, arbitrary
data-structure limitation, or outright bug you might encounter
in whatever applications your company has been schnookered into
standardizing upon???
If cars were built by desktop-computer software vendors, the
idiot lights would be replaced by a CRT, whereupon messages
would be displayed such as:
Volume <57 mph> not found, hit Brake to abort or Gas to try again
or, on graphical user interfaces,
The application "Suspension" has unexpectedly quit.
Deploy air bag supplemental restraint system?
+------+
| OK |
+------+
Seriously, I really liked the one about turning first to the
computer to solve appropriate problems. That may not impress
an employer who, in a slow market, is holding out for someone
who has experience in producing 4 1/4 x 8" quick-reference
cards in PageMaker on a Mac IIci in a northwest-facing cubicle
(OK, I exaggerate somewhat), but it cuts to the heart of the
matter.
The computer-literate person turns first to the computer and
the resources available through it (first using good sense to
decide whether the resources are better found elsewhere, cf.
all the people who post to the network, usually with WORLD
distribution, to ask a question that any encyclopedia could
have answered) and is free of data-destroying or workgroup-
aggravating folk theories about how the computer does things.
Get to that point and the specific applications are just a
matter of routine training.
Joe
"The pallid pimp of the dead-line/The enervate of the pen" --Robert Service
