[jobead]

Ahh, AutoCAD...the desktop app that pretty much _ruined_ me for all future applications. The first application that I ever used to actually create something new, before I even really learned to write code.

The beauty of AutoCAD was that it was designed for power users only. The learning curve was almost vertical...but to me, that's the true sign of a powerful application. Fortunately, I had a high-school drafting class and then took a class at my local community college...having a real-life instructor was invaluable. It was exclusively designed around a "one hand on keyboard, one hand on mouse" stance, but you could do _everything_ from that position.

Once I got over the the initial learning hump and most of the commands became second nature, I could work almost as fast as I could think. I was working on something like a 500Mhz PIII running Win98, and I cannot remember it ever lagging or crashing while I was working.

But the most important thing to me? Since it was a desktop app, it had 100% control over the keyboard and mouse inputs.

  No accidentally closing a tab or refreshing the page.  
  No browser updates f'ing with my right click menu.  
  No scroll-jacking.  
  No zoom-jacking.  
  No shortcut-key overlap with plugins (looking at you, 1Password/google docs)
  No input lag...EVER.

I miss that level of user/machine interface...Every. Single. Day.