Even from a premise that the introduction of networking and graphical GUIs was a huge mistake that caused software quality to plummet dramatically, a lot of modern software today is still faster and better designed than the software I had as a kid.
I can maybe accept that I got born at the wrong time and everything before that point was magical and wonderful. I never used early DOS word processors so I can't speak to whether the many features we have today are a worthwhile tradeoff for the startup speed. I'll have to take your word for it.
But if people want to say that we're actively making stuff worse today, they're skipping over a massive chunk of history. If you look at the overall trend of how computers have changed since the 90's, I think literally the worst thing you could say is that we are still recovering from a software quality crash. People either forget or dismiss that a lot of early 90s software was really, really bad -- both in terms of performance and UX.
From the original post:
> amber-screen library computer in 1998: type in two words and hit F3. search results appear instantly. now: type in two words, wait for an AJAX popup. get a throbber for five seconds. oops you pressed a key, your results are erased
I'm still calling bull on this, because I also used 1998 Library computers and a lot of them were garbage. And I've used modern Library search engines, and while they're not great, a good many of them have substantially improved since then. This is a rose-colored view of history based off of individual/anecdotal experiences.
I'm not wildly optimistic about everything in the software ecosystem today. I do wish some things were simpler, I do see systemic problems. But holy crap, HN is so universally cynical about computing right now, and I feel like there's a real loss of perspective. There are tons of reasons to be at least somewhat optimistic about the direction of computing.
Even from a premise that the introduction of networking and graphical GUIs was a huge mistake that caused software quality to plummet dramatically, a lot of modern software today is still faster and better designed than the software I had as a kid.
I can maybe accept that I got born at the wrong time and everything before that point was magical and wonderful. I never used early DOS word processors so I can't speak to whether the many features we have today are a worthwhile tradeoff for the startup speed. I'll have to take your word for it.
But if people want to say that we're actively making stuff worse today, they're skipping over a massive chunk of history. If you look at the overall trend of how computers have changed since the 90's, I think literally the worst thing you could say is that we are still recovering from a software quality crash. People either forget or dismiss that a lot of early 90s software was really, really bad -- both in terms of performance and UX.
From the original post:
> amber-screen library computer in 1998: type in two words and hit F3. search results appear instantly. now: type in two words, wait for an AJAX popup. get a throbber for five seconds. oops you pressed a key, your results are erased
I'm still calling bull on this, because I also used 1998 Library computers and a lot of them were garbage. And I've used modern Library search engines, and while they're not great, a good many of them have substantially improved since then. This is a rose-colored view of history based off of individual/anecdotal experiences.
I'm not wildly optimistic about everything in the software ecosystem today. I do wish some things were simpler, I do see systemic problems. But holy crap, HN is so universally cynical about computing right now, and I feel like there's a real loss of perspective. There are tons of reasons to be at least somewhat optimistic about the direction of computing.