[6273] in s-news-athena
Re: Ease of use
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Francois Gauthiez DRV-RH Maerha Na)
Fri Jan 27 04:06:02 1995
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 95 09:49:37 +0100
From: gauthiez@ifremer.fr (Francois Gauthiez DRV-RH Maerha Nantes )
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
>Mike Dix 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.
>
>Regards,
>
>Mike Dix
As far as I'm concerned, Splus is really easy to learn. Anyone who is
familiar with scientific programming can be able to work with Splus,
and will find that most of its functions are designed in a "natural"
way. Furthermore, the choice of "what function to use" is generally
quite obvious if you use "help.start".
On the other hand, Excel is for me one of the more complicated
things to use: to much icons; but I must admit that
this kind of software is not really intended
to people who know well the methods they are using.
Best regards,
Francois Gauthiez
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