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I have never really understood what 'modern' means whenever someone shows their new library / framework / tool. We're mostly just re-hashing ideas from the 60s

I have never really understood what 'modern' means whenever someone shows their new library / framework / tool. We're mostly just re-hashing ideas from the 60s and the 70s anyway. I think modern simply means "similar to what big tech does". So those ugly characters with big arms and small heads? Modern. Flat design? Modern. Is it good? Who cares, it's modern. When it comes to GUI it looks like we are slowly converging back to Windows 3.1 in terms of visual and programming style. Is it modern?

tata71 5y ago
> I have never really understood what 'modern' means whenever someone shows their new library / framework / tool. It means they think it can do modern web api stuff without having huge issues. It also signals that the speaker thinks others would make a similar choice in the future, for a dev tool etc., hoping for network effect . community familiarity and support.
cosmotic 5y ago
Win 3.1 shipped with zero-effort dark mode, so maybe a bit before windows 3.1 =)
- nine_k 5y ago
  You of course could switch color schemes easily. But a lot of apps ignored them, wholly or partially, and just hard-coded colors. Try it with e.g. MS Word 6.
  - cosmotic 5y ago
    I find that as time passes, more and more apps are custom rendered and don't use system color settings. Peak support was way back in the nineties.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      Peak support seems to be around the platinum/CDE time where everything was just happy to finally have consistent sets of widgets to work with.
thrower123 5y ago
Whatever this style is, it is very ugly. I miss the old days of lovingly crafted pixel-art skeumorphism - even videogames rarely bother anymore.
jhgb 5y ago
> I have never really understood what 'modern' means Well, to me that means things from the 1980s, when those ideas from 1960S and 1970s got sorted out and we got systems like St-80 with a small numbers of pervasive concepts, universally applied. Then you got the postmodern period of Perl and friends...
DeathArrow 5y ago
Vintage is modern by definition. :D

tata71 5y ago

> I have never really understood what 'modern' means whenever someone shows their new library / framework / tool. It means they think it can do modern web api stuff without having huge issues. It also signals that the speaker thinks others would make a similar choice in the future, for a dev tool etc., hoping for network effect . community familiarity and support.

cosmotic 5y ago

Win 3.1 shipped with zero-effort dark mode, so maybe a bit before windows 3.1 =)

nine_k 5y ago
You of course could switch color schemes easily. But a lot of apps ignored them, wholly or partially, and just hard-coded colors. Try it with e.g. MS Word 6.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  I find that as time passes, more and more apps are custom rendered and don't use system color settings. Peak support was way back in the nineties.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    Peak support seems to be around the platinum/CDE time where everything was just happy to finally have consistent sets of widgets to work with.

thrower123 5y ago

Whatever this style is, it is very ugly. I miss the old days of lovingly crafted pixel-art skeumorphism - even videogames rarely bother anymore.

jhgb 5y ago

> I have never really understood what 'modern' means Well, to me that means things from the 1980s, when those ideas from 1960S and 1970s got sorted out and we got systems like St-80 with a small numbers of pervasive concepts, universally applied. Then you got the postmodern period of Perl and friends...

DeathArrow 5y ago

Vintage is modern by definition. :D