One of my first gigs was replacing a VAX/terminal based software package with a Windows NT/PC thick client one. 17 year old me scoffed at the dumb terminals. W

One of my first gigs was replacing a VAX/terminal based software package with a Windows NT/PC thick client one. 17 year old me scoffed at the dumb terminals. When we converted users and they hated it, I learned SO MUCH. They could fly through the TUI. They’d have a form filled out before the screen could paint. The thick client didn’t even have keyboard shortcuts for most things. But the company had bought a ton of PCs and was moving everyone to the first iteration of Exchange. So I got the VAX up on the LAN and set them up with telnet. The users liked that. White text on a blue background became the most popular color combo. The internet was becoming a more popular thing, so they could begin the proud tradition of screwing off at work staring at a browser. Eventually the original package was retired and keyboard navigation was added to the thick client. But you couldn’t go “ahead” of it. And flipping between the keyboard and mouse is just slow for “real” work. They adjusted but I learned a lot about how a computer can best augment someone’s abilities. It’s not always the cool or most intuitive way. That exercise forced me to learn VMS, then I touched Solaris and fell in love. I couldn’t afford a pizza box as a college kid, so installed RedHat 4.1 from a CD in a book. Now I get mad when I have to edit text without vi. Same as it ever was.