24 lines
1.4 KiB
Plaintext
24 lines
1.4 KiB
Plaintext
user
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n. 1. Someone doing real work with the computer, using it as a means rather
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than an end. Someone who pays to use a computer. See real user. 2. A
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programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks silly
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questions. [GLS observes: This is slightly unfair. It is true that users ask
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questions (of necessity). Sometimes they are thoughtful or deep. Very often
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they are annoying or downright stupid, apparently because the user failed to
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think for two seconds or look in the documentation before bothering the
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maintainer.] See luser. 3. Someone who uses a program from the outside,
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however skillfully, without getting into the internals of the program. One
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who reports bugs instead of just going ahead and fixing them. The general
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theory behind this term is that there are two classes of people who work
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with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and luser s. The users are
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looked down on by hackers to some extent because they don't understand the
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full ramifications of the system in all its glory. (The few users who do are
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known as real winners. ) The term is a relative one: a skilled hacker may be
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a user with respect to some program he himself does not hack. A LISP hacker
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might be one who maintains LISP or one who uses LISP (but with the skill of
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a hacker). A LISP user is one who uses LISP, whether skillfully or not. Thus
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there is some overlap between the two terms; the subtle distinctions must be
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resolved by context.
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