4 ms·

I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? I sometimes want to feel

I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? I sometimes want to feel the experience of my Pentium 1 PC with that rubberdome keyboard and ball mouse. But I know it was a frustrating experience. The mouse didn't work exactly, we had to alt+ctrl+delete every 20-30 minutes. They keyboard felt like jello. The CRT monitor gave us headaches. Moreover I have a 2010 era functioning hybrid laptop that is collecting dust. I like the idea of familiarity it is certainly not a comfortable or faster experience. Is it veiled minimalism underneath you have frustration that you can't do anything that would be distraction because your computer is ancient.

chasil 5y ago
Just for fun, I have installed "Joe's Own Editor" by running "yum install joe" from Oracle's EPEL mirror. Then I ran "joe /etc/passwd" (after exiting root) then pressed ^K-h, and Wordstar's help menu appeared. Wordstar and the vi editor share evolution on serial terminals of the 70s (vi specifically on the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A). They were designed for a minimal number of keys, and thus keeping the hands on the home row, away from the function keys. Some people grow very much accustomed to this. $ rpm -qi joe ... URL : http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/ Summary : An easy to use, modeless text editor Description : Joe is a powerful, easy to use, modeless text editor. It uses the same WordStar keybindings used in Borland's development environment.
- colanderman 5y ago
  I use JOE as my daily driver. I grew up on Borland Turbo C, so it was an easy transition for me when I picked up Linux circa 2000. JOE ships with several keybinding variants as well. E.g. `jstar` launches JOE with more WordStar-like bindings.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    I'm in a similar boat. I used a lot of Turbo Pascal and EDIT.COM/QBASIC.EXE (which has some similar keybindings). Joe was the natural editor to use when I started with Slackware back in the early 90s. It's really a pleasure to keep using 30 year old muscle memory.
- dugmartin 5y ago
  I still use the muscle memory gained using Turbo Pascal 3 at 15 in 1986 in VSCode at 50 in 2021 as it maps _similar_ shortcuts using ^K-...
TrevorJ 5y ago
>I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? I suspect that asking the same question about musical instruments would lend a lot of immediate understanding about what might be going on.
simonh 5y ago
In this case if doesn't seem to be anything to do with the tech itself. It's just that this guy is used to using this particular software, there's no more recent software better at this task for him, and it happens to run on MS-DOS.
cogman10 5y ago
> is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? Depends on the person I'd assume. For older people, it's almost certainly familiarity. For younger people, likely a combo of minimalism and hipsterism. It comes up when someone talks about listening to something on vinyl or using typewriters instead of laptops.
Zababa 5y ago
I used to wonder about that too, but then realize that I grew up with Windows XP and already hate with a passion Windows 10 and 11. I've lived through ~15 years of technological change, and still have at least 40 in front of me. That's inspiring me to just switch to vim and a minimalist WM and never look back.

chasil 5y ago

Just for fun, I have installed "Joe's Own Editor" by running "yum install joe" from Oracle's EPEL mirror. Then I ran "joe /etc/passwd" (after exiting root) then pressed ^K-h, and Wordstar's help menu appeared. Wordstar and the vi editor share evolution on serial terminals of the 70s (vi specifically on the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A). They were designed for a minimal number of keys, and thus keeping the hands on the home row, away from the function keys. Some people grow very much accustomed to this. $ rpm -qi joe ... URL : http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/ Summary : An easy to use, modeless text editor Description : Joe is a powerful, easy to use, modeless text editor. It uses the same WordStar keybindings used in Borland's development environment.

colanderman 5y ago
I use JOE as my daily driver. I grew up on Borland Turbo C, so it was an easy transition for me when I picked up Linux circa 2000. JOE ships with several keybinding variants as well. E.g. `jstar` launches JOE with more WordStar-like bindings.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  I'm in a similar boat. I used a lot of Turbo Pascal and EDIT.COM/QBASIC.EXE (which has some similar keybindings). Joe was the natural editor to use when I started with Slackware back in the early 90s. It's really a pleasure to keep using 30 year old muscle memory.
dugmartin 5y ago
I still use the muscle memory gained using Turbo Pascal 3 at 15 in 1986 in VSCode at 50 in 2021 as it maps _similar_ shortcuts using ^K-...

TrevorJ 5y ago

>I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? I suspect that asking the same question about musical instruments would lend a lot of immediate understanding about what might be going on.

simonh 5y ago

In this case if doesn't seem to be anything to do with the tech itself. It's just that this guy is used to using this particular software, there's no more recent software better at this task for him, and it happens to run on MS-DOS.

cogman10 5y ago

> is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism? Depends on the person I'd assume. For older people, it's almost certainly familiarity. For younger people, likely a combo of minimalism and hipsterism. It comes up when someone talks about listening to something on vinyl or using typewriters instead of laptops.

Zababa 5y ago

I used to wonder about that too, but then realize that I grew up with Windows XP and already hate with a passion Windows 10 and 11. I've lived through ~15 years of technological change, and still have at least 40 in front of me. That's inspiring me to just switch to vim and a minimalist WM and never look back.