3 ms·

OH GOD NO. Man, I hated all that stuff at the time. If you're stuck in text mode, just be text. Don't try to mimic a GUI; it just looks weird and generally work

OH GOD NO. Man, I hated all that stuff at the time. If you're stuck in text mode, just be text. Don't try to mimic a GUI; it just looks weird and generally works poorly. A web site that imposed this sort of interface would be a site I visited ONCE.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Lmao I like how saying "no" got you downvoted. Express an opinion about a purely subjective thing that others don't like and you get downvoted. Come on HN, you can do better.
- jonsen 5y ago
  Commenter could do better than just writing an emotional burp.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    They put the same amount of effort in as the others. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808280 . It's just the unpopular opinion.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  I expected it, to be honest. HN is a place where threads settle into orthodoxy quickly.
lproven 5y ago
I suggest that you need to look at the historical context of it. When DOS was the uncontested king of business computing, user interfaces were all over the place. Every app had its own UI, its own keystrokes, its own everything. To steal some text I wrote for Wikipedia: In WordPerfect, the command to open a file was F7, 3. In Lotus 1-2-3, a file was opened with / (to open the menus), F (for File), R (for Retrieve). In Microsoft Word, a file was opened with Esc (to open the menus), T (for Transfer), L (for Load). It was a mess and a significant effort to learn multiple apps. Then classic MacOS and MS Windows started to introduce the idea of uniform UIs, where programs had the same menu bar with the same core menus with the same commands on them, opened and navigated with the same keystrokes. It made life so much easier. A lot of apps came across, even big-name ones -- for instance MS Word (v5.0, proprietary 2-line menus at the bottom of the screen; v5.5, CUA menu bar); WordPerfect (added CUA menus in v5); Borland Quattro; etc. And if you have a standard menu bar, then you more or less need to have dialog boxes as part of the UI. Once you go that far, you may as well apply it to multiple documents support and so on. And so you end up with a familiar, more-or-less harmonious UI across different apps from different vendors, and for the first time it became possible to operate a program you'd never seen before first time. This was a huge win for usability, accessibility, and it saved time, effort and stress for millions of people. It was a triumph. That UI persists today in most modern FOSS apps and desktops, except for intentional rebels like GNOME 3, who want to make us all use phones with big screens. If I am going to use a text editor, say, in the shell sometimes, then YES I want it to use the same UI I have in my GUI session, with the same keystrokes and menu options. Life is much to short to learn some crappy half-assed UI from the 1970s because a bunch of old dudes with beards have loved it ever since. Even if I am an old dude with a beard now.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  I'm 51. I lived the era you're describing, so yeah, I understand the historical context quite well. But you're crossing the streams a little here. Yes, it was a net win for the shift to GUIs to include a shift to very, very consistent interfaces. HOWEVER, it doesn't follow that goofy, hamfisted attempts to mimic those interfaces in text mode was a good idea. If you want that, just go use Windows (or the Mac). Word for DOS 5.0 was a fantastic program that I could move around in VERY VERY VERY quickly. It was powerful, stable, and extremely usable once you learned its interface. Word 5.5 for DOS ripped out the ESC menus for a crappy text-mode UI, and basically killed the product. (For my part, I immediately uninstalled it and reinstalled 5.0 so I could get work done.)
  - lproven 5y ago
    OK. Interesting. I'm 53, so yes, we're close. But I _strongly_ disagree. In fact I think I could reasonably say that I couldn't disagree more. I thought it was a huge win when DOS and console-mode apps adopted the general Windows-like UI. I worked in support back then. I had to learn many dozens of apps to support them. For instance... In word processors, on DOS alone I worked with MS Word, WordPerfect, DisplayWrite, MultiMate, WordStar (classic, 1512 (i.e. Express), & 2000 — all different), Samna Executive, PC-Write, VolksWriter, XyWrite, Protext, PFS:Write, and also LocoScript (from the Amstrad PCW, later on DOS). Probably others. Spreadsheets: Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Symphony, AsEasyAs, SuperCalc, Quattro, MS Multiplan. Probably more. I had to learn all of them, all separately, either at least the basics (I think Samna is the only one that defeated me there), or in multiple cases, pretty much inside-out. I mean, as an example, I didn't consider myself a guru, but I interviewed for https://www.newtonim.com/ https://www.newtonim.com/ in about 1992 and I got a record-best score (about 98%) in their test of my WordPerfect and 1-2-3 skills. Neither was even my favourite program of its type! It was a massive pain. I mean, yes, you're right, some of them were highly efficient interfaces. I didn't hate 1-2-3 or MS Word for their idiosyncratic 2-line menus. You had to memorize them to be fast and efficient, but it wasn't that hard and once you had, it was as you say very quick. Unlike, say, WordPerfect with its wretched Ctrl-F3, Alt-F6, Shift-F2, Alt-Shift-F8 workflow. Horrible and basically impossible to discover. If you didn't have that little cardboard keyboard template, you were doomed. But I didn't have the luxury of picking 1 app of each type and using only those. At work I used PCs with PC DOS, at home I used CP/M and Locoscript, later Acorn RISC OS, later still OS/2 2. I did charts and DTP on classic MacOS. All totally different, and my job meant knowing _all_ of the leading contenders in all categories. Sure it was possible to write attractive, efficient, DOS menuing systems. Novell's DOS menuing system on Netware clients and on the server itself was fast, easy, efficient, and attractive. So was 3Com 3+Share -- probably last seen by most people in the config tool for the classic 3C509 NIC. But they were totally different from one another. So if you only used MS Word, good for you. I envy you the simplicity that may have lent. But for those of us who changed apps considerably more than every day -- more like ever hour of every day -- no, the profusion of DOS UIs was a complete pain in the neck and made my job 10× more difficult. So when they all went away, replaced by a text-only version of the Windows/CUA guidelines, I celebrated. It made my life so very much easier. Which is why now, 3 decades later, I absolutely refuse to learn the horrid 1970s BS UIs of Emacs or Vim. I don't care how powerful they are. I'm not interested. I gave that rubbish up in about 1990-1991 and for me all those proprietary UIs died once the next-gen ones came along. Comply with the standards, or FOAD.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

Lmao I like how saying "no" got you downvoted. Express an opinion about a purely subjective thing that others don't like and you get downvoted. Come on HN, you can do better.

jonsen 5y ago
Commenter could do better than just writing an emotional burp.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  They put the same amount of effort in as the others. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28808280 . It's just the unpopular opinion.
ubermonkey 5y ago
I expected it, to be honest. HN is a place where threads settle into orthodoxy quickly.

lproven 5y ago

I suggest that you need to look at the historical context of it. When DOS was the uncontested king of business computing, user interfaces were all over the place. Every app had its own UI, its own keystrokes, its own everything. To steal some text I wrote for Wikipedia: In WordPerfect, the command to open a file was F7, 3. In Lotus 1-2-3, a file was opened with / (to open the menus), F (for File), R (for Retrieve). In Microsoft Word, a file was opened with Esc (to open the menus), T (for Transfer), L (for Load). It was a mess and a significant effort to learn multiple apps. Then classic MacOS and MS Windows started to introduce the idea of uniform UIs, where programs had the same menu bar with the same core menus with the same commands on them, opened and navigated with the same keystrokes. It made life so much easier. A lot of apps came across, even big-name ones -- for instance MS Word (v5.0, proprietary 2-line menus at the bottom of the screen; v5.5, CUA menu bar); WordPerfect (added CUA menus in v5); Borland Quattro; etc. And if you have a standard menu bar, then you more or less need to have dialog boxes as part of the UI. Once you go that far, you may as well apply it to multiple documents support and so on. And so you end up with a familiar, more-or-less harmonious UI across different apps from different vendors, and for the first time it became possible to operate a program you'd never seen before first time. This was a huge win for usability, accessibility, and it saved time, effort and stress for millions of people. It was a triumph. That UI persists today in most modern FOSS apps and desktops, except for intentional rebels like GNOME 3, who want to make us all use phones with big screens. If I am going to use a text editor, say, in the shell sometimes, then YES I want it to use the same UI I have in my GUI session, with the same keystrokes and menu options. Life is much to short to learn some crappy half-assed UI from the 1970s because a bunch of old dudes with beards have loved it ever since. Even if I am an old dude with a beard now.

ubermonkey 5y ago
I'm 51. I lived the era you're describing, so yeah, I understand the historical context quite well. But you're crossing the streams a little here. Yes, it was a net win for the shift to GUIs to include a shift to very, very consistent interfaces. HOWEVER, it doesn't follow that goofy, hamfisted attempts to mimic those interfaces in text mode was a good idea. If you want that, just go use Windows (or the Mac). Word for DOS 5.0 was a fantastic program that I could move around in VERY VERY VERY quickly. It was powerful, stable, and extremely usable once you learned its interface. Word 5.5 for DOS ripped out the ESC menus for a crappy text-mode UI, and basically killed the product. (For my part, I immediately uninstalled it and reinstalled 5.0 so I could get work done.)
- lproven 5y ago
  OK. Interesting. I'm 53, so yes, we're close. But I _strongly_ disagree. In fact I think I could reasonably say that I couldn't disagree more. I thought it was a huge win when DOS and console-mode apps adopted the general Windows-like UI. I worked in support back then. I had to learn many dozens of apps to support them. For instance... In word processors, on DOS alone I worked with MS Word, WordPerfect, DisplayWrite, MultiMate, WordStar (classic, 1512 (i.e. Express), & 2000 — all different), Samna Executive, PC-Write, VolksWriter, XyWrite, Protext, PFS:Write, and also LocoScript (from the Amstrad PCW, later on DOS). Probably others. Spreadsheets: Lotus 1-2-3, Lotus Symphony, AsEasyAs, SuperCalc, Quattro, MS Multiplan. Probably more. I had to learn all of them, all separately, either at least the basics (I think Samna is the only one that defeated me there), or in multiple cases, pretty much inside-out. I mean, as an example, I didn't consider myself a guru, but I interviewed for https://www.newtonim.com/ https://www.newtonim.com/ in about 1992 and I got a record-best score (about 98%) in their test of my WordPerfect and 1-2-3 skills. Neither was even my favourite program of its type! It was a massive pain. I mean, yes, you're right, some of them were highly efficient interfaces. I didn't hate 1-2-3 or MS Word for their idiosyncratic 2-line menus. You had to memorize them to be fast and efficient, but it wasn't that hard and once you had, it was as you say very quick. Unlike, say, WordPerfect with its wretched Ctrl-F3, Alt-F6, Shift-F2, Alt-Shift-F8 workflow. Horrible and basically impossible to discover. If you didn't have that little cardboard keyboard template, you were doomed. But I didn't have the luxury of picking 1 app of each type and using only those. At work I used PCs with PC DOS, at home I used CP/M and Locoscript, later Acorn RISC OS, later still OS/2 2. I did charts and DTP on classic MacOS. All totally different, and my job meant knowing _all_ of the leading contenders in all categories. Sure it was possible to write attractive, efficient, DOS menuing systems. Novell's DOS menuing system on Netware clients and on the server itself was fast, easy, efficient, and attractive. So was 3Com 3+Share -- probably last seen by most people in the config tool for the classic 3C509 NIC. But they were totally different from one another. So if you only used MS Word, good for you. I envy you the simplicity that may have lent. But for those of us who changed apps considerably more than every day -- more like ever hour of every day -- no, the profusion of DOS UIs was a complete pain in the neck and made my job 10× more difficult. So when they all went away, replaced by a text-only version of the Windows/CUA guidelines, I celebrated. It made my life so very much easier. Which is why now, 3 decades later, I absolutely refuse to learn the horrid 1970s BS UIs of Emacs or Vim. I don't care how powerful they are. I'm not interested. I gave that rubbish up in about 1990-1991 and for me all those proprietary UIs died once the next-gen ones came along. Comply with the standards, or FOAD.