4 ms·

What's old is new again! Beautiful and reminiscent of old school mainframe systems in CICS. When system users were mainly roomfuls of data entry staff (univer

by abraae 10y ago

What's old is new again! Beautiful and reminiscent of old school mainframe systems in CICS. When system users were mainly roomfuls of data entry staff (universally female) these systems were absolutely optimised for power users banging through as many transactions as possible. No mice in sight, all keyboard operation.

iveqy 10y ago
My thought is that such interfaces are bad for learning software and for get a good overview. But when you're a power user of a certain system (like the data entry staff) there's nothing that's better.
- endgame 10y ago
  Probably correct. And given that you're spending a comparatively small amount of time in that learning phase, would you want it any other way?
  - iveqy 10y ago
    I would prefer software that I use often to be hard to learn but easy to use. Seldom used software should instead be easy to learn, hard to use. I find that most software today is in the latter category.
- marktangotango 10y ago
  The reality is the world has moved completely away from terminal. The speed and productivity advantages are well known, but no one cares. By no one, i mean sales and procurement who hold cobol/green screen apps in very low regard. In other words, it's very difficult to sell trerminal applications when the competition is browser based i.e. insurance claim processing
  - yourapostasy 10y ago
    Sell them what they demand with a browser-based presentation, then package the terminal-based presentation as a separate, paid add-on option for high-volume customers. Market the add-on as meant only for high-end customers who will take the time to train staff in the kind of high-speed entry that only the terminal-based presentation can keep up with. Sprinkle in some stats about some multiplier of efficiency and accuracy improvement, then let the customers implement what they prefer. Between advances in ML-based OCR and dictation, I anticipate future data entry to get much more sophisticated, and demand extremely low-latency, quick-updating screens that might bring about more awareness of terminal-based interfaces in some situations.

by abraae 10y ago

iveqy 10y ago

My thought is that such interfaces are bad for learning software and for get a good overview. But when you're a power user of a certain system (like the data entry staff) there's nothing that's better.

endgame 10y ago
Probably correct. And given that you're spending a comparatively small amount of time in that learning phase, would you want it any other way?
- iveqy 10y ago
  I would prefer software that I use often to be hard to learn but easy to use. Seldom used software should instead be easy to learn, hard to use. I find that most software today is in the latter category.
marktangotango 10y ago
The reality is the world has moved completely away from terminal. The speed and productivity advantages are well known, but no one cares. By no one, i mean sales and procurement who hold cobol/green screen apps in very low regard. In other words, it's very difficult to sell trerminal applications when the competition is browser based i.e. insurance claim processing
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  Sell them what they demand with a browser-based presentation, then package the terminal-based presentation as a separate, paid add-on option for high-volume customers. Market the add-on as meant only for high-end customers who will take the time to train staff in the kind of high-speed entry that only the terminal-based presentation can keep up with. Sprinkle in some stats about some multiplier of efficiency and accuracy improvement, then let the customers implement what they prefer. Between advances in ML-based OCR and dictation, I anticipate future data entry to get much more sophisticated, and demand extremely low-latency, quick-updating screens that might bring about more awareness of terminal-based interfaces in some situations.