2

though i have a few somewhat more concrete ideas about what form this may take (some already posted as threads here), i thought it best to lay out this idea generally first, as it seems to be a principle too often overlooked.

software should educate the user.

rather than feeding the user fish, the software should teach users to be fishermen.

not merely a help file somewhere the user has to go out of their way to find, but just by the very use of the software, the user is given information and openings to pathways of learning deaper levels of the software.

this has the long term effect of more expediently converting [forgive me] burdensome end users (called by some, "noobs"), to helpful contributers.

for already existing examples, from the simple shallow level of keyboard shortcuts being presented on gui drop down menus, to richer educational experiences like installing slackware, and beyond... to things that dont exist yet, like a gui that teaches command line by showing equivalents, or a gui which is seamlessly also an IDE as standard.

thing is, if the software is doing more of the educating, everybody wins, experts get to spend more time developing software (or time spent otherwise) because they have to spend less time educating learners and directing them to educational resources and manuals because the software is doing it, and also because they'd be learning faster, so they'd be "noobs" for less time, and also there'd be a greater expert to "noob" ratio, it's a situation that just gets better and better, easier and easier, and then of course the software improves faster... as if open source needed more help, haha.

i really say all this, as a noob with an urge to have myself and every other noob magically (effortlessly, unwittingly, unintentionally) transformed into something more competent, knowing that kde has some seriously great developement tools, but i just dont feel like anything is funneling me there.. seems more like, somewhere out of my way, there are hoops to jump through to get there... it's like an insidious cathedral* in our midst.

*cathedral & bazaar reference

* Digit stops going on and on like a mini-me of Richard Stallman and raises a glass to Ephemeralisation (as coined by buckminster fuller).