"Users should be involved in decisions affecting them. The prevading idea of faculty and students was that Athena was doing something to them not for them. An informed user is in a better position of anticipating potential problems and weighing risks versus rewards in a conscious manner. "Buy in" is important!Understanding the business we are in is essential. The faculty are in the business of research and education, not programming per se. Students are in the business of getting an education through formal instruction and exposure to research, not programming per se. Software professionals are in the business of creating programs to accomplish a desired set of functions which are maintainable. Linking the right skills together results in a usable product. Less than that is amateurism.
The interest of the faculty is in the initial development of the educational software, not in its ongoing maintenance. The expectation is that once the software is written it should continue to run, indefinitely. The computational model of networked workstations with its tendency to change has far different implications than a personal computer where the operating system can be frozen forever." (Stewart, 1989)