Not necessarily.
Yes, necessarily. Read a couple of books on interface/industrial design. Joel Spolsky's is, fortunately, available for free and on the internets, and quite good:
User Interface Design for Programmers.
Most things that relates to one particular dwarf is accessed through simply viewing him [v], his stats, clothes, profile, health. The preferences menu [p] is used to select what tasks that dwarf will perform. Either labor or military tasks. So if you want to draft one particular dwarf it makes sense to press v to select him and then select his tasks. I learned this quickly because you're often using those menus, especially [p] to toggle labors on and off, and the activate option is on the same menu.
And putting jobs (soldiering is a job, too) into preferences doesn't make sense at all. I'd put that under "jobs". Maybe an extra item for the military. DF's interface is broken (mind you, not intentionally. It has just grown that way. It happens. It can be fixed). It is inconsistent with itself (F9 and Space bar to cancel something, but neither both), it is opaque (Jobs under preferences doesn't make a lot of sense. Trying to find out which wall of the half dozen you ordered built is impossible to find out without checking each and every wall under construction unless you wait until the other walls have been completed).
I think this is basically how it works in most mouse controlled strategy games. You see a unit, you click and select him and you see his stats along with a list of available orders either on a static submenu somewhere or from a floating submenu right next to the unit.
Tthat's how it works in Stardock Games and Stars! (
screenshot for lulz (a game that was compared to Excel, and was found less fun by some). IOW: Games for "purists" (a friendlier term for "elitists", if you aske me). A game with good UI design will present information as a coincidence of admiring the landscape. Look at Civ IV. You can take a look at in-depth statistics. However, the size of a settlement and its enhancements, the health of a unit, the resources of a tile are immediately apparent just by looking at them.
In RTS games you see the health of a building by the state it is in. Flames and collapsed sections hinting at more and more severe damage.
Look at the sales Civ IV, the Warcraft or the C&C series got, compared to the sales of a typical Stardock game.
DF can't do all that, since it is limited by its curses-interface.
From what I gather code critique didnt realize that the cursor has different modes [k], [q] [v] [t] for simply viewing or selecting different things which of course will be very confusing and frustrating in the beginning.
TFTFY. The only hint of what mode you are in is, if the menu changes (or appears in the first place, since I have tabbed it out for the most time). In short, DF's interface is not discoverable. There is no affordability in anything (stuff that is obvious to do). Also: Why the hell would I need different modes?
Because Toady didn't code in mouse support, that's why. He has and had his reasons. Doesn't make it a good choice. Not even a good trade off.
Don't praise, much less defend, what's broken. For newbies, DF's interface is the second circle of hell. And yes, that it's broken can be proven. Gather ten people from the street, and put them in front of Dwarf Fortress. Hilarity ensues. Now, put them in front of an iPhone/iPod Touch, and they'll be able to operate it after a while (the zoom gestures being taught by Apple's advertisements).