bad command or file name

Really? Is my command so bad? Then what would a good command look like?

Long gone are the days when I last saw the (in)famous error message. Most of us would have forgotten it by now. One of the blogs that I was reading today mentioned about it. And in a rhetoric manner.

Why would you want to tell someone that something they entered is bad? Or something bad has happened? Isn't that really foolish? Didn't Mom tell them: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." At least, don't say a bad word.

A major reason why software is not easy to learn is that it doesn't give positive feedback. We learn better from positive feedback, rather than from negative feedback. Would you prefer a hired ski instructor who yells at you? Or a restaurant host who loudly announces to other patrons that your credit card was rejected? Certainly not. Then why the should software tell me that I failed?

In my opinion, to be given negative feedback by software - any software - is an insult to human. Yes, I've read the three laws of robotics, and can recite them for you even during sleep.

Forget robotics and the mean machines, but for me, to be told by software that you have failed is degrading. And the same should be for everyone. There is nothing so important inside that dumb box that you can justify degrading a human user. If you want to protect you files, do it. But do so without bothering me. It's all right to protect the computer but not at the cost of bothering the user.

If I mistype a command, with bash, csh, sh, tcsh, zsh - they all tell me:
command not found

Well, that's better - it tells me without insulting me that my input could not be processed. And it even hints that what I entered was treated as a command, without misleading me to file names.

An error message is the program reporting on its failure to do the job, and it is interrupting the user to do this. So it must be polite, illuminating, and helpful.

Have you never heard - The customer is always right