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by xatax 254 days ago
He was around 40 years old when he said it and he wasn't talking about smartphones - at least what we call smartphones today.

> "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone".

> I said that after a frustrating attempt to use a "feature-rich" telephone sometime around 1990. I'm sure the sentiment wasn't original, and probably not even the overall phrasing; someone must have thought of that before me.

https://www.stroustrup.com/quotes.html
2 comments
flomo 254 days ago
He worked for AT&T at the time, right? Those corporate PBX systems had all sorts of crazy features which people mastered by pounding the 12 keys really fast. And he was probably on the bleeding edge of that. (In many places digital voice mail commonly predated email.)

edit to agree: obv Stroustrup in 1990 was not talking about your cell phone.

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doublerabbit 254 days ago
The terminal menu driven interfaces were archaic but a dream.

You had help, everything was explained in manuals, they rejected invalid outputs. Now everything is close eyes, press enter and pray it works.

Siemens ISDX was what I worked with. To build a new corporate extension was something like option 5-2-1-1 ext code Y 2-4-7 and then 9 to confirm.

Simpler times.

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nyarlathotep_ 254 days ago
> The terminal menu driven interfaces were archaic but a dream.

MicroCenter (by me, at least) still uses what looks like some terminal interface for checkout and such in stores.

It's a riot cause it's all young kids and all the keyboards are RGB gamer ones. I've never seen a faster checkout at a register.

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vasco 254 days ago
A lot of nerve from the guy that invented the hardest programming language to use right, and the easiest to use wrong.
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