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3.3 KiB
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21 lines
3.3 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>user</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../U.html" title="U"/><link rel="previous" href="Usenet-Death-Penalty.html" title="Usenet Death Penalty"/><link rel="next" href="user-friendly.html" title="user-friendly"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">user</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Usenet-Death-Penalty.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">U</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="user-friendly.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="user"/><dt xmlns="" id="user"><b>user</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. Someone doing ‘real work’ with the computer, using it
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as a means rather than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See
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<a href="../R/real-user.html"><i class="glossterm">real user</i></a>. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who
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asks silly questions. [GLS observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true
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that users ask questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or
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deep. Very often they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently because
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the user failed to think for two seconds or look in the documentation
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before bothering the maintainer.] See <a href="../L/luser.html"><i class="glossterm">luser</i></a>.</p></dd><dd><p> 3. Someone who uses a program from the outside, however skillfully,
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without getting into the internals of the program. One who reports bugs
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instead of just going ahead and fixing them.</p></dd><dd><p>The general theory behind this term is that there are two classes of
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people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and
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<a href="../L/luser.html"><i class="glossterm">luser</i></a>s. The users are looked down on by hackers to
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some extent because they don't understand the full ramifications of the
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system in all its glory. (The few users who do are known as <span class="firstterm">real winners</span>.) The term is a relative one: a
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skilled hacker may be a user with respect to some program he himself does
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not hack. A LISP hacker might be one who maintains LISP or one who uses
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LISP (but with the skill of a hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP,
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whether skillfully or not. Thus there is some overlap between the two
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terms; the subtle distinctions must be resolved by context.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="Usenet-Death-Penalty.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../U.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="user-friendly.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Usenet Death Penalty </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> user-friendly</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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