My contention is that you should focus on meeting your current customer, not your (hypothetical) next customer’s (hypothetical) requirements. They’re very hard to validate :)

re: Word processors/document processors - yeah - there’s a paternal rule-of-thumb-guide to form, structure and content required to stoke up the fires of dissent.

I used to have something in my manifesto about showing other people mindmaps, and how this was like answering someone’s question by pointing at your book collection and saying - “voila!”

Maybe I’ll put that back in.

Also, I thought word processors were bad news. I thought you needed document processors.

I don’t think the my computer location is a killer for the most people don’t seek out, or understand trees argument.

I don’t know why I focused on trees. I think there is a more general point to make about developers’ tendency to clone their IDE (even if Unix is their IDE) in the application they’re building. I guess they assume that if they’re so productive with something that looks like this IDE, then all of their users will be too!

Also agree 100% with your point(s) about trees. But in Win XP I don’t think that “My Computer” is on the desktop by default any more. IIRC it’s just the recycle bin.

Agree about Unfinished Sympathy though.