Re: proposal: alternative psql commands quit and exit

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Szymon Lipiński <mabewlun(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Well, if I have a new program I usually read some documentation. It really
> helps people to exit vim as well :)

Look, I love vim and use it constantly, but no reasonable person is
going to hold it up as a good example of user-friendly software.
According to Wikipedia, it was written in 1976 by Bill Joy, and
computers have come a long way in the last 40 years. They are,
broadly, easier to use now. For example, current versions of vim let
you move around using new-fangled arrow keys, as if computers were
supposed to cater to the lowest common denominator! Real men (like
me) use hjkl to get around the screen, and look upon those who resort
to the arrow keys as Johnny-come-latelys. Nevertheless, I can hardly
fault vim/vi's concession to modernity in this regard.

> Thinking this way for me psql's way is the intuitive one, because I know it.
> Should I kindly ask Oracle to change their programs because I rather want to
> use their software than reading their documentation?

If you can convince Oracle to add support for \q to sqlplus, I say go
for it. Actually, what I'd like even better is if you could convince
them to add curses support, but I guess they would have done that 30
years ago if they were inclined to do it.

Really good software -- which sqlplus is not -- doesn't make it
necessary to read the documentation. It helps you figure out how to
use it as you go. When I fire up a new app on my iPhone, it generally
gives me a clue how to use it. Sure, there's probably an app in the
Apple Store someplace that is absolutely unusable without reading the
documentation, but that's a bug, not a feature. It's expected that
you'll have to read the documentation to figure out how to use the
advanced features of any complicated program, but that doesn't mean we
should make simple things complicated just to scare off users that
aren't sufficiently committed to the Cause.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company