Semantic analysis of one response (was Re: Autocoding project proposal.)

[Peter Hansen]

Courageous wrote:
> 
> >> 3) you really don't understand it.
> 
> >You tell _me_ which it is.
> 
> The phrase "you really don't understand" is just a frustrated
> way of saying "I lack the ability to explain properly" most of
> the time. Don't fret. They can't help it.

No fretting going on here.  I'm just having fun. :-)

I think Timothy has an idea that would make computers
much easier to use, but he's making one or more of the following 
mistakes:

1. Thinking his idea is new and that most of us haven't had
   roughly the same idea already, when in fact we've all thought
   similar things or read about them, sometimes decades ago.

2. Thinking it's an idea that can be turned into an implementation
   with relatively little work, when in fact it is something that
   requires not only an enormous amount of work but even advances
   in computing in areas which have proven slow to advance (e.g. AI).

3. Thinking most of us have even the slightest idea what he's
   trying to say when he talks, when in fact his words are so
   abstract, obscure, meandering, or just plain semantically and
   grammatically unrecognizable that most of his time writing 
   is wasted.

...and probably a few others I haven't thought of yet.

Anyway, it's not that I don't think he has a valid point somewhere,
but that I think his idea is so many levels above what is actually
feasible (here combining the ideas of "possible" with "affordable")
that there's little point discussing it.  I'm also trying to drill
it through his head that he needs to communicate better if he wants
much serious discussion, but perhaps he listens as poorly as he
expounds.