Re: Text is bad: Was Ideas in Motion

["Anthony Markatos" <tonymar -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Mark Baker said:

The written word is one of the most potent of all our technologies. ....

Tony Markatos:

Not when it comes to documenting procedural information on systems.  In 
systems, procedure is, except at the very detail level, highly asynchronous 
- multiple things occurring at the same time and multi-decision branching.  
Written text is very synchronous (i.e., sequential).

Every graphical procedure documenting technique (like data flow diagrams) is 
based on the principle that you can not effectively use a synchronous 
technique (text) to document asynchronous information.

There are other very important reasons why text is poor for documenting 
procedural information.  Such as verification:  Asynchronous procedure is 
very hard to document correctly the first time (or second time); multiple 
walkthroughs with end-users is required.

Try conducting a meaningful walkthrough of complex written procedure with an 
end-user - even a highly motivated end user.  Folks, it just is not going to 
happen!  Oh sure, you will get a few correction marks and the like - buts 
thats about it.

In contrast, walkthroughs of (well constructed) dfds yields a wealth of 
information (corrections) and result in much higher quality procedural 
documentation.

Tony Markatos
(tonymar -at- hotmail -dot- com)








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