basic rules of design (was Re: Comments on Python Redesign)

[Anton Vredegoor]

Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:

>> A basic rule of design should always be:  a default (www.python.org) value
>> should satisfy the _majority_ of usage cases (not those with the most
>> money/corporate power/whatever).  Since the majority of visitors to the
>> site can arguably be thought to be developers, _that_ is the audience the
>
>As a general principle of design, this is wrong, because it does not
>take into account the _COST_ of occurrences of "not satisfying".

Since no one dares to tackle this, and it has to be dealt with,
reluctantly I'll make a start. There's more to it than costs, also the
*changing of the definition of what gains and costs are* and the
directions one wants to take have to be considered.

>Of course, if one DOES consider costs appropriately, then the thesis that
>Fernando wants to promote doesn't necessarily follow any more.  It may
>well be argued that developers are more web-savvy than managers and other
>corporate decision-makers, easily able to follow a link and/or set a
>bookmark as appropriate -- so that failing to serve developers by the
>default homepage has low cost, while failing to serve managers by it
>(even though it were true that *EVEN IN THE FUTURE* most visitors will
>be developers) may well have higher costs.

The general idea seems to be that it's costing very little to give way
to managers while it brings a lot of advantages that cannot be gained
any other way because of the low tolerance of these people for
developer friendly web sites. While this dichotomy is questionable
from the outset there are also other issues that are more important
than static traffic analysis.

For example consider Christopher Columbus setting foot on America for
the first time. This is not just some dry historic fact but it also
marked the exact landing place as a place with higher probability of
future expeditions landing at the same spot. While it is not *sure*
following parties will choose the same spot, it still is likely that
they will follow directions from the first traveler. Also a small base
camp or the remains of it will make it easier for the next ship. Maybe
there where some friendly relations with the local population later
and some primitive exchange of goods (that was before some other
highly ominous occurrence prompted the visitors to wipe out almost the
entire population of the continent, I don't claim to know the exact
details but it's just an image :-| )

For those more given to statistical analysis consider f.e. a 100x100
grid where each point initially has a probability of 1/10000 to be
selected. After a point is selected the point itself and some points
in its neighborhood receive higher probabilities to be selected next
time, (all probabilities can be scaled anew after that, so that they
once again sum nicely up to 1.0) Now repeat the process a few thousand
times and some chaos-like (highly dependent on initial occurrences)
distribution of hits per point will result.

>From this thought experiment completely different statistical
evaluations follow than those from f.e. a static analysis of web
traffic, because the *evaluation function* itself changes as a result
of previous hits. This calls for a different kind of view than mere
static statistical evaluation, it calls for more active anticipating
what direction one wants to go because of the importance of initial
conditions. To see an example of what I mean visit f.e. the home of
the Rubik's cube.

http://www.rubiks.com/

There's just business advertisement there, nothing else, it's dead as
a dodo, or should I say parrot? 

Anton