Hmm. The above points up major differences in philosophy on which I muse now
and then. It's not just the ancient GUI / text debate, it's more of a "good
enough" versus "WAY more features than necessary, so many that basic function
is lost", and touches on every aspect of why I so greatly prefer OS/2. I'll
try to limit focus here to just ctorrent.
Volker Ehlert, along with I presume others, for their own probably essentially
geeky reasons, have given us a simple command-line tool that does everything
necessary to download a torrent. I'm grateful for it, as the application is
definitely above my level of interest to pursue, and probably above my
competence to even compile, let alone code. So Ctorrent9 is GOOD ENOUGH for
me, certainly so for the limited use I have for bittorrent.
But I'm NOT DISAPPOINTED with "good enough". I'm a utilitarian whose GOAL is
"good enough". Ctorrent9 does what it's supposed to without needing my
attention. That's GOOD program design.
As I've pointed out previously, the only problem using it is the NUISANCE of
starting torrents, either right after download or resuming after power-off. So
I wrote a little front end for ctorrent9 in REXX which helps with that.
All too often in the computer world, useless eye-candy is tacked on, along
with "features" that I never use. The philosophical divide occurs here: WHY
should -- HOW could -- this be "improved" with graphics when it does its one
function without problem, without annoying me?
My central problem with GUI the way Crimosoft does it is that it FREQUENTLY
demands my attention for some "problem" that I don't care about: a little box
pops up and demands a click when I have "unused icons"; a floppy format
finishes NORMALLY and up pops a dialog box demanding that I acknowledge it,
because to Crimosoft, successfully formatting a floppy IS a big deal --
anyway, the NAGGING is ENDLESS, even after turning off "balloon tips".
All of that just distracts me from the little bit of creativity that I have.
Sure, I have, and frequently still do, just PLAY with the computer as such,
but recent GUIs demand CONSTANT attention, something must always be flashing.
I don't want progress bars flashing while I'm concentrated on this text, for
instance, so I minimize or cover even the Ctorrent monitor window. If I want
to know the status of downloads, I just hit ctrl-esc, and they're in the
window list. The status lines in Ctorrent Monitor are almost incidental: I
used them for information while debugging, then prettied them up a bit.
Without flashing, the WPS, besides the rest of OS/2, just sits there, doing
what it's supposed to. It's BORING, and that was INTENDED. I'm GLAD that the
software engineers spent their time on fundamentals rather than frills. Last
weekend, I showed this system to a fellow who was thoroughly UN-impressed with
the same chunky icons of 1993 just sitting there. He doesn't understand that
OS/2 was written fresh from the ground up, drawing of course on previous
experience which avoided most of the problems while greatly innovating. He
doesn't understand that though OS/2 looks little different from Windows 3.1,
it's actually STILL more revolutionary than anything else Crimosoft wrote. It
was TOO revolutionary: Crimosoft greedily continued peddling a graphical shell
atop single-tasking DOS for at least SEVEN years after OS/2 2.1GA. Incredible.
IF OS/2 development had continued -- but that gets to my point: seems very few
people are able to live with "good enough". Crimosoft in particular keeps
adding eye candy without ANY increase of function. So we in the OS/2 world are
perhaps lucky that it HASN'T been "improved" except for necessary fixes.
Perhaps OS/2's BORING reliability was actually part of the reason it lost in
the "marketplace". With Windows, you always have the impression that it's
doing something complex and exciting, and because boring old reliability was
way down on their list of importance, you soon learn that you do indeed have
to watch it constantly, and even then can't avoid some pretty spectacular
crashes. OS/2 just can't match Windows for that "edge of the cliff" feeling.
-- I'm mostly serious. People LIKE to be scared: just consider how popular are
horror movies, role-playing games, and rollercoasters.
So... Guess I sum up for now by saying that I prefer BORING.