In "In the Beginning ... was the Command Line", Neal Stephenson wrote:
> It is not hard to imagine what the world would look like to someone
> who had been raised by contractors and who had never used any drill
> other than a Hole Hawg. Such a person, presented with the best and
> most expensive hardware-store drill, would not even recognize it as
> such. He might instead misidentify it as a child's toy, or some kind
> of motorized screwdriver. If a salesperson or a deluded homeowner
> referred to it as a drill, he would laugh and tell them that they were
> mistaken---they simply had their terminology wrong. His interlocutor
> would go away irritated, and probably feeling rather defensive about
> his basement full of cheap, dangerous, flashy, colorful tools.
Erin suggested I play with InDesign, since I love typography, so I
installed it from CWRU's software center to have a look. It struck me as
an interesting toy that could potentially produce impressive results,
but I can't see myself ever taking it seriously. I told her this --- I
did in fact use the word "toy" --- and she said that the students in her
school swear by it.
But I grew up on TeX. You can have my macro language when you pry it from my
cold, dead fingers.
