User:DonRedman/Misunderstanding Don Redman

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Misunderstanding DonRedman happens to every one of us from time to time. This is due to the semantic structure used in his sociologist speak.

So what happens is that a hacker and DonRedman use the same word, but mean different things:

  • When they talk about a user interface, the hacker might think about how it looks and how to code it, while Don thinks about how it will structure the interaction with the user. Even worse he might inadvertedly use the UI as a metaphor for the patterns of interaction.
  • Same thing when you talk with him about what a program should do. You might think he is telling you something about what the program code should do. But Don never thinks about elements, what he thinks he is talking about is what the combination of the program and its users/clients/servers are doing, how they are interacting.

A good hint at why it is so easy to misunderstand DonRedman is a sentence he took from Gregory_Bateson:

  • The relationships are more important than the elements. (Bateson did not say it this way, but he means it all the time).