"Bill in Co" surly_curmudgeon@earthlink wrote

| +1 for making the point. Even if there are only two of us in here that
| "get it". :-)
|
I've run into that same parochial mindset time
and again in programming groups. Programmers
who've lived in corporate settings think everyone
in the world uses MS Word, and think the only
way to use a computer is to use it as a corporate
workstation.

In that world it's not your computer and you
have no business doing much of anything other
than writing Word docs and saving them to your
docs folder.

The striking thing is that people get so accustomed
to that mindset that they're convinced it's actually
wrong to use a computer any other way. You're
not just different. You're just plain wrong.

I can't count how many times people have lectured
me on how unstable and unsafe my computer is,
despite knowing nothing of how I use it.

That became an especially big problem post-XP.
Suddenly the lackey mode that was impossible to
enforce in 9x and wasn't normally enforced in XP
became the only "right way". Doing things like
storing settings under Program Files or writing
to HKLM were judged to have always been flawed
programming methods. The problem with that
logic, though, is that it allows no way for people
to smoothly use a SOHo computer. If you can't
write to HKLM or all-users app-data then you can't
set settings systemwide. So a boss can't set up
software for employees. Dad can't set up software
for the kids. And so on. Usually in SOHo there's only
one user, or there's one person who sets things up
for everyone else. But the corporate software
developers and IT people don't get that because
they've only worked in corporate, where the IT
dept does setup and no one is allowed to do anything
but their work on the workstation they use. It may
not even be assigned to them. They might log onto
different computers at different times.

There's also an insidious aspect to that scenario:
Microsoft have used security and corporate models
to justify their takeover. With Vista+ they're your
IT person. With 10 you're really a corporate lackey,
without even control over updates. Your only
right is to do your work and save to your documents
folder. And since MS is now your IT overlord, you
have no business expecting privacy.

I sometimes get around the problem of corporate
model with my own
software by creating folders in Program Files during
setup, removing all restrictions from those folders,
then using them for TEMP files and program settings
files. It's sort of like a portable approach but with
convenience of installed software. It allows for
centralized settings with no security risk.

But I'm writing software aimed at people who own
their own computer
and use it as they please. I find it's nearly impossible
to explain my method to the corporate types. They've
been trained to start screaming and call for backup
when they hear, "store under Program Files".