Subject: Re: CCL:Gaussian revised GUI

From: Konrad Hinsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 09:11:14 +0100

Joe Leonard <[email-masked]> writes:

> I've been in this business a long time, and I've not seen terribly many
> cases where people wanted useability vs. feature improvements (either

That is partly due to filtering. Most scientific codes with a long
history are quite messy and complicated. Those who have taken the
effort to learn what needs be be learned want to profit from this
investment and use the tool as much as possible, and what they want
most of all is new features to make the tool more useful. Those who
weren't motivated enough to become experts are not users of the code
and become invisible to its developers.

> for their support money, or whatever).  Rewriting and validating code's
> a SIGNIFICANT undertaking, and not one to be taken on whim.  I've

True in principle, although developing big packages now is a lot less
painful than it was twenty years ago, due to improved development
tools. Unfortunately, scientists are largely ignoring them.

Moreover, user interfaces can be improved without necessarily
rewriting the code. Interfacing with a modern scripting language can
make an enormous difference in usability for a comparatively small
investment.

Finally, a good user interface isn't necessarily a graphical one, nor
a simple one. A good user interface is one that lets users express
their computations in terms of concepts that they are familiar with
and without arbitrary complexities (such as inconsistent syntax).
Meaningful error reporting is another important issue.
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