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The flawed history of graphical user interfaces
- Someone 8y agoI don’t see anything but opinion here. The writer may be right, but doesn’t give any argument that can help readers make their own judgments.
- mimixco 8y agoThat and a lot of nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, I love old computers, too, but going back to 1976 isn't going to fix UI's for most people. The Xero Alto was revolutionary not only for the GUI it evolved (not invented, out of Doug Engelbart's NLS) but also for it's underlying use of the Smalltalk language which made the system theoretically programmable by anyone. The problem is that NO UI is going to make programming accessible to everyone, a lesson we learned painfully and expensively in the 90's when CASE (computer aided software engineering) tools were all the rage. For you see, it isn't the UI that makes programming difficult (nor the language), it's the cognitive burden of building a complex construct of nothing. There are only so many people in the world who can or desire to be programmers. The idea that coding is for everyone is just as foolish as the idea that playing piano is for everyone. Sure, anyone can hack at a keyboard (musical or otherwise), but writing great and useful software takes special skills. The UI isn't going to gift them to you. I do think we need better user interfaces and it's true that today's applications have moved backwards in many ways, but don't let wistfull recollections of things that never were get in the way of real progress.