*blink* That's neat.

[Niels Diepeveen]

Martijn Faassen schreef:
> 
> I'm not claiming we should ignore HCI people. You were the one who started
> with the silly usability research comment. :) But if certain HCI people
> produce research that shows 'and' and 'or' are about the worst names for
> these operators, then I'd indeed question that research and those particular
> HCI people. There isn't actually such research, is there, though, I assume?

I wouldn't be surprised if there was. If you use common words for
certain things, people will assume that they know what they mean. So
they _will_ write things like "if a is 1 or 2". Stands to reason that
that doesn't mean "always", right? Forcing them to use unfamiliar
symbols like "==" and "||" would probably cause them to think twice
about what they really mean, and save them a few hours looking for a
problem that turns out to be in the one piece that is so obviously
right. Counterintuitive semantics are a far greater problem than
unfamiliar syntax.
  BTW, my own observation is that many people have enormous problems
understanding Boolean expressions with multiple operators, no matter how
you write them. This is especially true if there is negation involved
somewhere.

> 
> Note that I'm not questioning the Alice result on case-sensitivity;
> I'm sure case-sensitivity confused beginners. 

I'm not sure Alice has much of a "result" to offer on the subject. As
far as I can tell from the paper I have read, doing away with case
sensitivity was just the nearest hack available, not a decision based on
scientific analysis of the whole interface problem. I'd want to see some
serious research before accepting sweeping statements like "Case
sensitivity is a bug in programming languages intended for novice
users.". (That should be taken to mean that I think the Alice project is
not serious research; I just think it's far from conclusive on this
issue. Even simple people aren't that simple.)

-- 
Niels Diepeveen
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