This editorial speculates on what could happen when legions of
Windows programmers flock to the Linux operating system.
“Once even a small portion of the Linux development community
gets religious about usability and human factors issues, which
might only happen through a demographic shift, the product could
change radically in a single major release. (Anyone doubting the
potential power of a paradigm shift, to use yet again the most
overused expression in all of computing, need only look at how the
World Wide Web has gone from a pipe dream to an economic and
technical juggernaut in just a few years.) If all this shift does
is largely divorce Linux users from their reliance on command-line
tools and text configuration files, it would be an immeasurable
improvement for mainstream users.”
“The key detail is that we’re not just talking about adding more
programmers to the mix, but programmers with a particular mindset,
and one that’s very different from that of the existing Linux
community.”