[bitwize]

This is pretty much the standard issue "Ignorant/arrogant code jockeys have no idea how alone and scared us users are, and our need to be mollycoddled" rant.

It's Niklaus Wirth. He's the creator of Oberon, a language/OS/development environment which, while a bit idiosyncratic by our standards, is far more powerful than ed.

Oh, and while we're talking about the "real world", why do we never discuss the data entry clerks, sales associates, and customer service reps who learned to operate terminal-based F-key-driven UIs quite efficiently -- and were then forced on to graphical MFC, Java, or Web-based UIs with little thought given to efficient operation with the keyboard alone? The standard Macintosh-based WIMP paradigm is great for onboarding new users, but it's less good for efficient use by a trained operator when speed or volume is important.

Personally I find overlapping windows and icons to be more essential than... ugh... composited desktops. Translucent windows, drop shadows, and the "genie effect" are fun for half an hour tops, but these desktops consume additional processing power and memory and introduce latency! I'd rather go with a 90s style stacking WM.

[zozbot234]

> Translucent windows, drop shadows, and the "genie effect" are fun for half an hour tops, but these desktops consume additional processing power and memory and introduce latency

There's certainly some room for optimization in how desktops work today. I can see the obvious case for tear-free (v-synced) compositing when dealing expressly with full-screen (or close to full-screen) animation or full-screen video, since screen tearing is highly noticeable in these use cases. Wrt. everything else though, there's nothing wrong with rendering without vsync and avoiding that added latency. These optimizations can however be hard to make precise beyond very simple cases, like a single foregrounded full-screen app being enabled to take over the whole display. Tiled windows might be the next most obvious step.