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by bombcar 33 days ago
It's not just what we've lost, it's an incredible disservice to "non-nerds" - old DOS programs may have been annoying and cluttered, but everything was right there and more importantly, it didn't change so you could learn what you needed and just work with it.

We could go back and forth on things like "the ribbon" being better or worse, but the fact that it changes depending on window size is an incredible sin. Hello, everyone! Learn how to click a tiny 5x5 pixel arrow or lose your menu items forever!
1 comments
xp84 33 days ago
It's like a compromise was made at some point where they decided that in order to get what they predicted would be slightly higher adoption, it's okay to usher in a world where most consumer-facing software is essentially impossible to become a 'power user' of, because of abridged ('decluttered') functionality, lack of keyboard shortcuts, extreme lag caused by excessive animation, and a UI that changes for fashion reasons every few months.

I look at retail for examples of this. If you watch an experienced cashier who interacts with a system all day, they have perfect muscle memory of the keyboard or keypad, and operate it so fast that you would have to ask them to slow down to understand what they're doing.

Now many of those have been replaced with touchscreens, which are noticeably worse -- since the UI is never fast, you have to stop and wait for the next UI to appear after many of the steps, instead of letting the keyboard buffer do it for you, which worked great on a decades-old system. But, I assume the companies who allowed that replacement believed it was worth it to be able to onboard a new cashier just a bit quicker, with a UI that looks just like the iPads that they were raised on, complete with big unlabeled icons and "three lines" or "•••" buttons.

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bombcar 33 days ago
I’m always reminded of the old text UIs at Fry’s Electronics - a salesman could slam in all the keystrokes necessary to print your pick slip before the screen had even finished loading the first inventory. It was pretty impressive.

Meanwhile I live in a world where opening five Salesforce tabs locks them all up.

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