I call it automiscorrect. First, it is very easy to mistype on these touch based interfaces and then they miscorrect using too large a vocabulary. At USC, back when I was a student, they started us off with PL/C, a subset of PL/I. The PL/C compiler tried its level best to make sense of the student programs it was given, with error messages such as “PL/C uses ....”. This was confusing to many students as they would do exactly what PL/C said it used and yet their program didn’t work. > On Feb 11, 2020, at 6:38 AM, Clem Cole wrote: > >  > Amen. As a dyslexic (which most often shows when I'm typing as you folks have experienced) autocorrect generally is a PITA. FWIW: Grammerly works well for me. It underlines in dotted red and lets me look at what it thinks it should be - where I can accept it or not. > > Doug -- I agree DWIM was just silly.... UCB's Pascal system (pix) tried it also and let's just say it failed as I explain in a comment /answer on quora (https://www.quora.com/When-you-are-programming-and-commit-a-minor-error-such-as-forgetting-a-semicolon-the-compiler-throws-an-error-and-makes-you-fix-it-for-yourself-Why-doesn-t-it-just-fix-it-by-itself-and-notify-you-of-the-fix-instead). > > Clem > > > >> On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 10:33 PM Doug McIlroy wrote: >> > What i like is the autocorrect feature in v8: >> > >> > $ cd /usr/blot >> > /usr/blit >> > $ pwd >> > /usr/blit >> >> Here I am, editor of the v8 manual and unaware of the feature. >> We now know that silent correction is a terrible idea. >> >> Postel's principle: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal >> in what you accept from others" was doctrine in early HTML >> specs, and led to disastrous disagreement among browsers' >> interpretation of web pages. Sadly, the "principle" lives on >> despite its having been expunged from the HTML spec. >> >> Today's "langsec" movement grew out of bitter experience >> with malicious inputs exploiting "liberal" interpretation of >> nonconforming data. >> >> Today's NYT has an article about fake knockoffs of George Orwell >> for sale on Amazon. It cites an edition of "Animal Farm" >> apparently pirated by lowgrade OCR autocorrected and never >> proofread. One of the many gaffes is that every instance of >> "iv" beame ChapterIV, as in "prChapterIVacy". >> >> I didn't like some Lisp systems' DWIM (do what I mean) when I >> first heard about the feature, and I like it even less 40-some >> years on. I would probably have remonstrated with Rob had I >> realized the shell was doing it. >> >> Doug