[6270] in s-news-athena
Re: Ease of use
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Z. Todd Taylor)
Thu Jan 26 19:34:34 1995
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 16:06:13 -0800 (PST)
From: d3a061@aggie.pnl.gov (Z. Todd Taylor)
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
Cc: zt_taylor@pnl.gov
On Jan 26, michael j dix <mdix@dcssc.sj.hp.com> wrote:
> 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.
I could read the manuals cover to cover once a week :-) in
the time I save using Splus instead of a spreadsheet.
--Todd
