[buescher]

The article covers everything I miss about desktop applications in a nutshell. Mostly that wild sense of discovering what you can do with a computer that you might not have tried to do at all or left to experts. But also not least that you can still run it decades later.

[wobfan]

Exactly this. This is what got me into computers when I was about 6. Way too early to understand stuff, but I just loved (and it evolved around this until about 14 I guess, when I started to use computers increasingly to get some stuff done) to poke around with colorful icons, spaces, expert settings, finding hidden options and panels - not initially understanding what they do but finding it out in the process.

I am increasingly put off by the current user interfaces which are based on modern, flat, designs, and tailored for users that don't need a lot of settings. All these exciting stuff from earlier days is omitted. I get that it looks better and works better for most of the people, but software just lost the excitement it once had for me. (back in the day, everything was better, haha)