A Quote by Douglas Coupland

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude. — © Douglas Coupland
We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude.
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more 'user-friendly'... Their best approach so far has been to take all the old brochures and stamp the words 'user-friendly' on the cover.
When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French.
I'm not of the opinion that all software will be open source software. There is certain software that fits a niche that is only useful to a particular company or person: for example, the software immediately behind a web site's user interface. But the vast majority of software is actually pretty generic.
Microsoft has laid down the foundations for next-generation computing and is the founder in terms of providing user-friendly software - thereby increasing the number of novice users.
The iPhone was the first phone that brought what we used to think of as 'desktop quality' software to a handheld platform: software where you just say, 'Wow, that's a great user experience,' not merely, 'Wow, that's a great user experience for a handheld.'
In a user lead model, users are bringing in their own technology... and you can build software then, around the user.
The novice-friendly software is more like a misbehaving dog: it shits on the floor, it destroys things, and stinks - the novice-friendly software embodies the opposite of what computer people have dreamed of for decades: artificial stupidity. It's more human.
... the designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. ... If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.
If car manufacturers made cars according to spec the same way software vendors make software according to spec, all five wheels would be of widely differing sizes, it would take one person to steer and another to work the pedals and yet another to operate the user-friendly menu-driven dashboard, and if it would not drive straight ahead without a lot of effort, civil engineers would respond by building spiraling roads around each city.
I'm not massively into computers. I'm a fan of Macs because they're more user friendly, so I'm used to using them.
However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.
It's like male geeks don't know how to deal with real live women, so they just assume it's a user interface problem. Not their fault. They'll just wait for the next version to come out- something more "user friendly.
When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.
If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.
She warned me about Mr. Herondale, though, said he’d likely be rude to me, and familiar. She said I could be rude right back, that nobody would mind.” “Someone ought to be rude to him. He’s rude enough to everyone else.
When you develop software, the people who write the software, the developers are the key group but the testers also play an absolutely critical role. They're the ones who ah, write thousands and thousands of examples and make sure that it's going to work on all the different computers and printers and the different amounts of memory or networks that the software'11 be used in. That's a very hard job.
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