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Subject:RE: encouraging learning by experimentation? From:John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 5 Dec 2002 14:27:41 -0500
Lois...I think the environment then is different than what we come across
now. At that point, computers and software were gee-whiz experiences. The
stuff was new, it was unique, and the type of people who used computers at
that point were the curious.
In today's environment, computers are like adding machines were then...they
are tools. Do the job, get it done in the shortest period of time.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
212-414-6656
"Be accurate...the 4am wakeup call you prevent could be your manager's"
-----Original Message-----
From: Lois Patterson [mailto:skycerulean -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 2:22 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: encouraging learning by experimentation?
I think one practical example that Hackos referenced
in respect to encouraging experimentation and error
recovery was IBM's documentation for DisplayWrite, an
early word processing package. Obviously
experimentation in that context is quite different
than experimentation when using mission-critical
applications.
I'm not advocating for this approach, necessarily. I
am interested in what contexts technical writers have
used it, successfully or not.
Lois Patterson
--- John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> wrote:
> Lois...something is missing. Most of the users from
> my past experiences were
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