{"id":39643,"date":"2004-04-26T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-26T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2004\/04\/26\/in-order-to-demonstrate-our-superior-intellect-we-will-now-ask-you-a-question-you-cannot-answer\/"},"modified":"2004-04-26T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-26T07:00:00","slug":"in-order-to-demonstrate-our-superior-intellect-we-will-now-ask-you-a-question-you-cannot-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20040426-00\/?p=39643","title":{"rendered":"In order to demonstrate our superior intellect, we will now ask you a question you cannot answer."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the development of Windows&nbsp;95, a placeholder dialog  was added with the title,  &#8220;In order to demonstrate our superior intellect,  we will now ask you a question you cannot answer.&#8221;  The dialog itself asked a technical question  that you need  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/cult\/hitchhikers\/guide\/marvin.shtml\">  a brain the size of a planet<\/a>  in order to answer.  (Okay, your brain didn&#8217;t need to be quite that big.)\n  Of course, there was no intention of shipping Windows&nbsp;95 with such  a dialog.  The dialog was there only until other infrastructure became available,  permitting the system to answer the question automatically.\n  But when I saw that dialog, I was enlightened.  As programmers, we often find ourselves unsure what to do next,  and we say,  &#8220;Well, to play it safe,  <a href=\"http:\/\/mikepope.com\/blog\/DisplayBlog.aspx?permalink=485\">  I&#8217;ll just ask the user what they want to do<\/a>.  I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;ll make the right decision.&#8221;\n  Except that they don&#8217;t.  <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2003\/09\/01\/54734.aspx\">  The default answer to every dialog box is Cancel<\/a>.  If you ask the user a technical question, odds are they they&#8217;re  just going to stare at it blankly for a while, then  try to cancel out of it.  The lesson they&#8217;ve learned is  &#8220;Computers are hard to use.&#8221;\n  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catb.org\/~esr\/writings\/cups-horror.html\">  Even Eric Raymond has discovered this<\/a>.  (Don&#8217;t forget to read his  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catb.org\/~esr\/writings\/luxury-part-deux.html\">follow-up<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>  So don&#8217;t ask questions the user can&#8217;t answer.  It doesn&#8217;t get you anywhere and it just frustrates the user.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the development of Windows&nbsp;95, a placeholder dialog was added with the title, &#8220;In order to demonstrate our superior intellect, we will now ask you a question you cannot answer.&#8221; The dialog itself asked a technical question that you need a brain the size of a planet in order to answer. (Okay, your brain didn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-39643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>During the development of Windows&nbsp;95, a placeholder dialog was added with the title, &#8220;In order to demonstrate our superior intellect, we will now ask you a question you cannot answer.&#8221; The dialog itself asked a technical question that you need a brain the size of a planet in order to answer. (Okay, your brain didn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}