[6269] in s-news-athena
Ease of use
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (michael j dix)
Thu Jan 26 18:59:15 1995
From: michael j dix <mdix@dcssc.sj.hp.com>
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 95 15:28:31 "PST
I feel compelled to chip in to the reference-manual-reading debate:
Splus is not easy to learn, and when one tries to do something new, it is
often not obvious what functions to use. Learning Splus is not an end in
itself, it is a means to an end, data analysis. If mastering Splus
continues to be on a par with computer languages such as C, it will not
survive: most users will switch to something like Excel, which is
becoming more powerful with each release. The amount of time and
brainstrain required to be productive with something like Excel is far less
than with Splus. The cost of Excel-like software will become much, much
less, eventually there will not be enough Splus users to cover the development
costs.
If the majority of the s-news list has time to browse through the manuals,
looking for the useful gems, I am envious.
Regards,
Mike Dix
