- From: Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar@googlemail.com>
- Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:07:50 +0000
- To: "Philip Taylor (Webmaster)" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
- Cc: Daniel Glazman <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com>, Jon Barnett <jonbarnett@gmail.com>, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>, Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>, "public-html@w3.org" <public-html@w3.org>
On 12 Nov 2007, at 18:40, Philip Taylor (Webmaster) wrote: > Daniel Glazman wrote: >> Jon Barnett wrote: >>> Users do indeed know the difference between a GET and a POST after >>> the >>> fact - when they press the refresh button or the back button. >> BWAHAHAHAHA !!!!! That must be a joke. Not only they don't know the >> difference, but they don't even know what's a GET. >> Normal people don't even make the difference between the Web and the >> Internet, come on ! > > Normal people don't understand the difference > between a Diesel engine and a petrol engine, > but they still know the importance of putting > the correct fuel in each. I fail to understand this metaphor… I doubt very much that the normal person knows the importance of using a GET request versus a POST request. Such a metaphor assumes they even know there are multiple types of request. If you were to ask a normal person a question such as, "What's the importance of using a POST request not a GET request in HTTP?" (the least technical way to question this as far as I can see, as the petrol/diesel metaphor relies on people knowing what the two are as well), you'd get answers including: - "Huh?" (from a guy who has been around developers for years, but is not a developer himself) - "Security? Reliability?" (from a software developer, who has had one or two things to do with HTTP over the years) - "emm i really have no clue either sorry" (from a 15/16 year old British school pupil) Nobody really knows the importance of either. Some software developers have little clue, yet alone normal users. -- Geoffrey Sneddon <http://gsnedders.com/>
Received on Monday, 12 November 2007 20:08:10 UTC