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> The reason software is so complex now is that our expectations as users is orders of magnitude higher than it was "in the good old days". I'm old enough to re

> The reason software is so complex now is that our expectations as users is orders of magnitude higher than it was "in the good old days". I'm old enough to remember the good old days, so I can speak with a little authority here. Eh, maybe I've just turned into an old curmudgeon, but I very rarely fire up a "new" application and think "wow, this is so much better than the old days". At least in terms of design, I find that most applications held up as some "gold standard" - iOS, Slack, Discord - are incredibly intrusive and obnoxious (not to mention unstable). Applications used to be a lot simpler and less opinionated. They did one thing, and they did it very well. I suspect it's a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, too much money and teams that are too large.

digi_owl 9y ago
hear hear.
rrobukef 9y ago
Yet I don't have driver issues, codec issues, bluescreens anymore. I don't need to fail compiling a kernel. I can watch a movie without downloading it, I can store a high quality picture on a floppy disc, maybe two. Computers entertainment has changed: the internet works (no more unsupported browsers), gaming works (rarely hard system requirements like specific video cards). Business works too (no more emailing spreadsheets, accounting software works, shared calendars) Applications did one thing, they didn't always do it well.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Yes, operating systems got a lot better. Arguably apps got worse. Things that are now routine for apps that used to be considered unacceptable: - Don't start if you're offline - Limited or crap drag/drop. - No app icon or start menu integration. - File type associations, forget about it. - Generic object linking/embedding, gone. - Scriptability, gone. A well written Windows 95 app would work offline, integrate with the Explorer, have an icon, might be able to embed itself into Word documents, and probably exported an API via DCOM. Modern apps? Uh, well.... they do similar things but at the same speed at best, quite possibly slower. They routinely barf if they can't reach the internet (e.g. any web app). Every resource dimension is 10x larger. Quite likely, I can't actually save stuff to a file. They crash less, but experience other kinds of flakyness more. And they probably find scrolling through any kind of non-trivial dataset a monumental challenge. Slack in particular is terribly flaky.

digi_owl 9y ago

hear hear.

rrobukef 9y ago

Yet I don't have driver issues, codec issues, bluescreens anymore. I don't need to fail compiling a kernel. I can watch a movie without downloading it, I can store a high quality picture on a floppy disc, maybe two. Computers entertainment has changed: the internet works (no more unsupported browsers), gaming works (rarely hard system requirements like specific video cards). Business works too (no more emailing spreadsheets, accounting software works, shared calendars) Applications did one thing, they didn't always do it well.

peoplewindow 9y ago
Yes, operating systems got a lot better. Arguably apps got worse. Things that are now routine for apps that used to be considered unacceptable: - Don't start if you're offline - Limited or crap drag/drop. - No app icon or start menu integration. - File type associations, forget about it. - Generic object linking/embedding, gone. - Scriptability, gone. A well written Windows 95 app would work offline, integrate with the Explorer, have an icon, might be able to embed itself into Word documents, and probably exported an API via DCOM. Modern apps? Uh, well.... they do similar things but at the same speed at best, quite possibly slower. They routinely barf if they can't reach the internet (e.g. any web app). Every resource dimension is 10x larger. Quite likely, I can't actually save stuff to a file. They crash less, but experience other kinds of flakyness more. And they probably find scrolling through any kind of non-trivial dataset a monumental challenge. Slack in particular is terribly flaky.