Functionalism, aesthetics Was:(RE: I come to praise .join, not

[Carlos Ribeiro]

At 08:11 20/03/01 +0100, Alex Martelli wrote:
>Back when "Concorde" and "Jumbo" first appeared on the scene, for
>example, non-experts found the former quite beautiful, the latter quite
>plain.  Sure the sleek, fast-looking lines of Concorde were superior to
>the goofy-looking fatness of Jumbo?

Are you sure that this is a good example? One thing is to be impressed by 
the look, and the other is to actually use the product. Opinions may (and 
will) change afterward. This is pretty much common in architecture also, 
where we have beautiful buildings that simply don't work. Also there is 
another important point in your example.

The Concorde was designed by comitte, and it shows. A lot of the reasons 
why the Concorde looks cool is that it was designed based on some purely 
objective assumptions. The comitee decided that people would pay more to go 
faster - so the supersonic speed. For a supersonic, you have to follow 
different design rules - so the cone nose and the shape of the wings was 
born. As the resulting airplane got large, the crew needed some way to see 
the ground - and the moving nose was designed. So the cool look. People 
were impressed by the visual design, but not by the solution. Thats why it 
failed.

The Jumbo is one of the best examples of "design patterns" that we can 
think of. It was an evolution of a line of airplanes, borrowing features 
from the great bombers of the World War II and the first commercial jets. 
It was a very conservative design, and while it keeps innovating, Boeing is 
extemily careful about introducing new features. It took them decades to 
make a fly-by-wire 747.

This is a great quote from Boeing website:

"One thing about the Boeing 747 is clear: the more things appear to stay 
the same with this magnificent giant, the more things change. While today's 
747 might look like the first 747, it is an entirely different airplane -- 
after all, an airplane that's accumulated 20 billion miles (32 billion km) 
of airborne experience is bound to evolve. "
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/history.html


>We can endlessly discuss where computers and software
>fit on this scale, but surely the example of pharmaceutics
>does suffice to show conclusively that, with far too many
>modern technologies, it's quite likely that what appears to
>the untrained eye has *zero* relevance -- that, no matter
>how ideologically unpleasant this may feel, we DO have to
>rely on _expertise and training_ to be able to judge certain
>issues.  Vox populi is NOT necessarily vox Dei -- not when
>the underlying technology is too new (a few centuries) and/or
>not reflected in immediately apperceivable traits.

I'm not talking about completely untrained users here. Most doctors would 
appreciate the explanation given by the pharmaceutical industry. And while 
I agree that Vox Populi != Vox Dei, this has *nothing* to do with the 
technology maturity as measured by time alone. Our innate reaction against 
change play a big role here too.

> > To summarize it: a  *technically* optimal solution for a problem is not
> > always the *best* solution. If it does not look intuitively good for most
> > users, its probably a bad solution.
>
>So, you're arguing that the amount of artificial coloring should
>have been kept high (who cares about giving users cancer, right?),
>since that bright color was definitely what "looked intuitively
>good for most users" as proved by the endless carping...?

Ok, ok. ' Users' is misleading. However, for Python, 'users' usually means 
programmers, people with sufficient knowledge to make good questions about 
proposed changes.

> > Its unfortunate that in many cases the non-expert user keeps quiet,
> > assuming that whatever opinion the "master" haves, its going to be better
> > than theirs - after all they are the so-called experts.
>
>Ask the experts in any field whether untrained users keep too quiet,
>or not enough, in their field, and you'll get a different opinion (of
>course, self-serving conscious or unconscious biases are at work
>as well!).

The fact that many people complain without reason is not a valid excuse for 
ignoring all complaints.


Carlos Ribeiro


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