Olin Lathrop wrote:
> V G wrote:
>> I don't want to waste time learning it when there's
>> other software that's far easier to learn
>
> Then you'll be cursed to use software that is optimized for first
> impressions instead of useful depth and lasting utility.
>
> Your choice of course, but please don't whine about it here either way.


It looks like you have taken the statement out of its context. The context =
was:


> I think it's to do with how similar the mindset/thought patterns of the
> developer and user are. For some software, things are exactly where I exp=
ect
> to find them, function names are exactly as I expect them to be (so when =
I
> search the help documentation, things are easy to find), workflow
> is complimentary to mine, and so on. Other software - everything is
> counterintuitive (to me anyway). But then again, there are those who are
> opposite to me and "click" with the software I can't work with.

He was not talking about  first impressions. What he was talking about
were "discoverability" of the software product, I think. Complex
evolving product normally never gets 100% discovered by a user. A user
would reveal and learn new features permanently.  The process can or
can not be easy. That depends on many factors.

If a software product is one-off complex pilot project on a very
limited budget, you would normally expect that discoverability of the
features, code comments, documentation etc will be stripped down to
the very minimum set by a customer.

If developers are smart and the budget is good, you would expect that
most of the features would easily be getting discovered and learnt by
a user even without reading the docs.

In my personal experience the best user's comment on discoverability
of the application features was, - "learning to product features was
like playing a computer game".
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