It's crazt to see how heavily the FOSS community focuses on first principles thinking. Microsoft really understood, and still does, understand the value of the

It's crazt to see how heavily the FOSS community focuses on first principles thinking. Microsoft really understood, and still does, understand the value of the other kind of design, based on common task patterns and human factors rather than naturally flowing from some core philosophy. Elegant software always requires you to learn to adapt not only the task but your thinking to the tools, and you're pretty much on your own to design a workflow, Microsoft style design tries to give you an obvious way to do the common stuff, even if it's inelegant and hackish and has no basis in any logic, it's reliable and widely known and easy. Elegance is a pretty heavy constraint.