Anthropomorphosis

Subject: Anthropomorphosis
From: Scott Herron <sherr19 -at- IDT -dot- NET>
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 09:47:34 -0400

The story so far:

> > > I wrote "When you enter a word or phrase in one of the fields,
> > > the system will search for exact matches." What is wrong with this phrase[?]
> > > It sort of gives the system a personality then, but what makes that a bad thing?

> > In my opinion, this is not anthropomorphic at all. You're not saying
> > 'the system will be happy' or 'this makes the computer feel useful'.

> Many PROGRAMMERS do this because they really, honestly, truly, believe
> that computers ARE HUMAN.

I don't know if that's really the reason or if it's just mental
shorthand, but you do hear things like "this program _expects_ to_ find_
it's_ DLLs in the .\DLL directory," and "that program _wants_ to_ see_
EPS files, not BMP files."

Clearly anthropomorphic -- but sometimes it's more important to go with
the "clearly" than to avoid the "anthropomorphic."

Regards,

--
Scott Herron | sherr19 -at- idt -dot- net

That "deep thoughts" bit at the bottom.

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