Re: Cocoa et al as HCI usability problem

FROM : David Wilson
DATE : Sun May 18 18:15:53 2008

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Erik Buck <erik.<email_removed>> wrote:
> Cocoa is the most consistent, elegant, and productive software development
> technology I have ever used, and I have used a lot.  Cocoa uses key
> metaphors and design patterns ubiquitously.  If the programmer is either
> unaware of the metaphors or  does not see their utility, it will be
> difficult to use Cocoa.  If a programmer fails to grasp a particular
> pattern, the whole framework may be incomprehensible because the pattern is
> most likely used throughout.


I have to second this. Cocoa certainly has its quirks, but it seems to
have far fewer of them than any other toolkit (especially any other
GUI toolkit) that I've ever worked with.

I daresay that 90% of the problems that I've seen with Cocoa usage
(either my own or that of others) is born out of the programmer
fighting the system. It's very easy to get an idea in your head about
how something "must" work, and because we're dealing with
Turing-complete languages here we can generally make something work
even if it requires taking a sledgehammer to the problem. And, of
course, when we're done forcing the round peg into the square hole,
we're frustrated that the toolkit didn't make it easy for us.

With Cocoa, there seems to a be a very simple guiding principle: If
you're frustrated because the system isn't letting you do what you
want, rethink what you want to do and how you want to do it. A lot of
thought and design has gone into Cocoa; it's worth respecting all of
that design and asking yourself, when you're fighting the frameworks,
if it's really the frameworks that are doing the wrong thing in that
instance- because, at least in my experience, chances are it's the
programmer.
--
- David T. Wilson
david.t.<email_removed>