[SciPy-user] Thoughts on GUI development

[Eric Bruning]

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 4:12 PM, Barry Wark <barrywark at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think what Stef is getting at is that effective scientific software
> may need to match its user model to the user's world model. In other
> words, the "workflow" matters. If the software requires the user
> (scientist/engineer/etc.) to deal with data or process in a different
> order than the order implied by their experiment, the software is not
> as good as it could be. In my view, this is why we build UIs--so that
> we can match the software model to the user's model such that the
> software is "invisible" to the user in doing their work. I contend
> that it is a rare case when a CLI interface is the *best* fit to the
> user's world model.

Workflow is defininitely the key reason why I want a GUI. Perhaps
Gael's point is that building a flexibile workflow is one of the most
challenging parts! I'm glad to see tools being developed that are a
more natural fit for the way I think about data and interfaces.

> Of course, as Gael points out, writing GUIs takes time. The tradeoff
> then is efficiency of use for the user versus efficiency of delivery
> time for the developer.

And this tradeoff is compounded when user and developer are the same -
finite time and all that!

-Eric