On Sat, 23 Dec 2023 07:51:01 -0500
Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Other than drag and drop, I'm trying to figure out why some people
> prefer using a Desktop Environment over just a Window Manager and a
> bunch of a-la-carte applications. So two questions:
>
> 1) What benefits do you see besides drag and drop?

I think that it is rather simple: for the most people out there
in the beginning there was "windows" and if they change
for some reason to linux (usually annoyed by something
MIcrosoft did, thus giving the energy to break the principle
of maximum laziness or inertia) they just want the same
experience as before (just without Microsoft) thereby confirming
the law of maximum laziness.
>
> 2) How important is drag and drop in the way you use your computer?

It depends strictly on the question if the user is a reader or a looker:

older people like most of the ones on the list are readers (you can easily
recognize them because they still can tell you the full alphabet of their
language and they do take notes with paper and pens or even pencils!
and they do know by memory the multiplication tables they learned at school).
For them memorizing a path is not that much difficult as they are trained from
school to put bigger things together from smaller pieces (e.g. words from letters,
full sentences from words etc.), this fact united with some fast typing makes
command line interesting for them even if there are more key presses than clicks.

Some time during the last 20-25 years at least in Italy the school system changed
from the "small pieces to bigger pieces" paradigm to a top to down paradigm
(they call it "dal generale al particolare", from the general principles to the
particular") this was the beginning of a catastrophe.
Even the graduates (with some exceptions) come out of school and know
absolutely nothing, they are bad at reading and worse at writing
(simply because they copied, pasted and printed everything all their life)
and for them it is a huge task to memorize something that requires
more than maximum ten seconds of attention (so no commandline).
After ten seconds they start to search for a workaround that frees
them from this energy consuming task that being attentive is,
usually they grab their phones and start askin "hey google" or "Siri"
or "alexa" what the solution is.
For those people a gui is the only viable alternative, so that they
can point and click, drag and drop or swype with their little fingers .
They abhor a system that doesn't allow them to click, drag or swype,
for them it is simply broken, not fit for the purpose.
They were grown and educated as lookers (and/or media consumers)
and they do live that way.

Ciao,
Tito

P.S.: this is not a rant, like "in the past everything was better" but somethings
that were already good were improved to much......

>
> Thanks,
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
> Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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