Wow. Before this I think PuTTY’s configuration dialogs were lazy, maybe even there wasn’t a “design decision” to make them that way, but the idea the author likes this layout seems very strange to me. I hope this is not what they mean.
But I like some idea of symbiosisware anyway; Most of my business is a bunch of perl scripts…
Heh, I somewhat agree with you but there’s some interesting contrasts there as well. I couldn’t tell you when I started using PuTTY, but I deeply appreciate how it works exactly the same today as it did when I started using it. There’s never been a moment where I’ve installed PuTTY on a new machine and couldn’t immediately use it without having to hunt around for “that thing that moved”. And… I just checked on a PuTTY process that that I’ve connected to a USB-Serial terminal right now and Windows is reporting that it’s using 0.1MB of RAM!
I didn’t read it that way, since the article only says it was designed for one user, not that it only has one user. Once upon a time, PuTTY only had one user, so yeah, I don’t agree it is clearly not symbiosisware.
Further, I don’t think “small screens” justifies just how weird PuTTY’s configuration/session interface is: People, including myself (and almost certainly including the author) get “used to it”, but I also watch new users who need an SSH client on Windows struggle to translate their familiarity with other Windows applications to that configuration screen, and I sometimes find myself wondering why it works that way.
I also like David MacIver’s more general notion of situated software, though its meaning is not as immediately obvious as “symbiosisware”.
Wow. Before this I think PuTTY’s configuration dialogs were lazy, maybe even there wasn’t a “design decision” to make them that way, but the idea the author likes this layout seems very strange to me. I hope this is not what they mean.
But I like some idea of symbiosisware anyway; Most of my business is a bunch of perl scripts…
Heh, I somewhat agree with you but there’s some interesting contrasts there as well. I couldn’t tell you when I started using PuTTY, but I deeply appreciate how it works exactly the same today as it did when I started using it. There’s never been a moment where I’ve installed PuTTY on a new machine and couldn’t immediately use it without having to hunt around for “that thing that moved”. And… I just checked on a PuTTY process that that I’ve connected to a USB-Serial terminal right now and Windows is reporting that it’s using 0.1MB of RAM!
PuTTY is clearly not symbiosisware: it has a lot more than 1 user, so obviously this article is not a guide to how Simon thinks about PuTTY.
But the PuTTY documentation discusses its dialog box design constraints
I didn’t read it that way, since the article only says it was designed for one user, not that it only has one user. Once upon a time, PuTTY only had one user, so yeah, I don’t agree it is clearly not symbiosisware.
Further, I don’t think “small screens” justifies just how weird PuTTY’s configuration/session interface is: People, including myself (and almost certainly including the author) get “used to it”, but I also watch new users who need an SSH client on Windows struggle to translate their familiarity with other Windows applications to that configuration screen, and I sometimes find myself wondering why it works that way.