-----Original Message----- From: Kirby Urner [mailto:urnerk@qwest.net]

"Information hiding" means sparing me the details. In an open source world, I might be able to see those details if I really cared about them. In the case of a private bank, fat chance.

Yes, we are at the core of some considerable sensitivity in my (other) world. And yes, we are touching upon emotion and politics as well as API design. Pausch advocates exposing folks to a 3d API that spares the user the need to understand what "rotate" and "translate" means to everybody else in the known world working in 3d. I disagree, to say the least. There is not a theory adequate to settle our disagreement. We end up, as Laura says (I think), only able to make judgment calls as to what is and what is not appropriate as to what to expose and what not to expose, depending on what we are trying to accomplish. Judgment calls are to me a-theoretical. I think I understand the basic theory - and reserve to the right to do little more than take it under advisement. Art