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As a kid, the OS's supported me in learning. They were simple, intuitive and rewarding. I'd click around and explore, and discover cool things like a Wheezer mu
by hi_hi 2y ago
As a kid, the OS's supported me in learning. They were simple, intuitive and rewarding. I'd click around and explore, and discover cool things like a Wheezer music video, or engaging puzzle games.
There was no one who could help me when I got stuck, beyond maybe an instruction manual. I just had to figure it out, mostly by trial and error. I learned so much, eventually being able to replace hardware, install and upgrade drivers, re-install the entire OS and partition the hard drive, figure out networking and filesystems. It built confidence.
Now my kid sits infront of an OS (Windows, Mac, it doesn't really matter) and there's so much noise. Things popping up, demanding attention. Scary looking warnings. So much choice. There's so many ways to do simple things. Actions buried deep within menus. They have no hope of building up a mental model or understanding how the OS connects them to the foundations of computing.
Even I'm mostly lost now if there's a problem. I need to search the internet, find a useful source, filter out the things that are similar to my problem but not the same. It isn't rewarding any more, it's frustrating. How is a young child meant to navigate that by themselves?
This looks like a step in the right direction. I look forward to testing it out.
- underlipton 2y agoThere're also performance issues. Building muscle memory (which means offloading tasks from working memory, leaving it open for learning) can't happen if you're constantly trying to figure out when the system is going to actually respond to your input.
- crims0n 2y agoThis is so true. The most frustrating thing in the world to me is waiting for the UI to catch up to my actions… that should just never happen in 2025. Not only is it frustrating to wait, but as you elegantly stated it forces the menial task to enter working memory.
- LoganDark 2y agoWin32 would buffer keystrokes so that a sequence of commands wouldn't be lost even if the UI took long to respond (e.g. if a dialog took long to open), but that has mostly been lost in the era of web apps and other similar bullshit.
- int_19h 2y agoModern web (and web-like) apps all too often don't even bother supporting keyboard for anything other than text field input. What I find especially infuriating are the dialog boxes where the only thing you have is a textbox and a button, and yet you cannot press Enter to submit the dialog once you finish typing - nope, you have to reach out for the mouse and click that button.
- LoganDark 2y agoThis is why I commonly have a trackpad in addition to a mouse when I use Windows. Literally, mouse on right, trackpad on left. It's much faster to use the trackpad for annoyances like these. I also find that trackpads are ten times better for scrolling.
- titzer 2y agoWe largely abandoned an unbelievably efficient form of human input in favor of big fat dumb slow touchscreens. Can you imagine where we'd be as a species if we got our shit together 25 years ago and standardized a few of the most important keyboard shortcuts and layouts and that was the default everywhere? I won't advocate terminal-only, but even classical GUIs with windows and icons and all could have been much more efficient if keyboard input and navigation was given priority instead of the comedy of using a pixel-precise indirect pointer to fart around a virtual screen select some button when...there are buttons under my fingers.
- int_19h 2y agoWe did standardize a lot of keyboard shortcuts and layouts. And it was fairly widespread, even, with both Windows and macOS retaining some bits of it (sadly, fewer and fewer with each new update). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
- accrual 2y ago> Things popping up This is one of my biggest frustrations with modern GUI computing. It's especially bad with Windows and Office, but it happens on iOS and macOS too to an extent. Even though I've had Office installed for weeks I still get a "look over here at this new button!" pop-up while I'm in the middle of some Excel task. Pop-up here, pop-up there. It's insane the number of little bubbles and pop-ups and noise we experience in modern computing.
- fragmede 2y agoOmfg I do not need national political news shoved into my face in on the left side of my taskbar while I'm trying to focus on work, thank you Microsoft, k thx bye!
- booleandilemma 2y agoYeah I just wanted to check the weather...
- imgabe 2y agoYou can turn that off, it’s the first thing I do on Windows. I agree you shouldn’t have to though.
- netsharc 2y agoGoogle Android phones do so freaking much of this too. Open the Google app (or swipe left from the home screen on the Pixel Launcher), gone are the days where it's a copy of their original homepage and is just a search bar, now it has news... Go to the search bar, and it shows trending searches. Die in a tucking fire!
- red_trumpet 2y agoYou can definitely disable the "swipe left" thing on the launcher.
- oefnak 2y ago
- Andrex 2y agoHumans hate being bored but only dick-around and learn things like this when they're bored. Speaking personally, I guess. Since the 90s we've found "better" ways at "curing" our boredom. Put this UI on a modern OS in front of a kid today and they would just download Steam, Chrome and Discord. And be assured, they're very proficient at the in-and-outs of those platforms. Just some random thoughts I had, not sure any of it tracks...
- _carbyau_ 2y agoI think part of it is that ubiquitous internet access. Take that away so you have a standalone computer that you "run programs on" and it becomes simpler.
- jon_richards 2y agoI used to think I watched TV or scrolled Reddit because I didn’t have the energy to pursue more interesting things. I blocked Reddit and TV. Turns out I have plenty of energy, those were just stealing it from me.
- whatevertrevor 2y agoYeah I agree. The trial and error mentioned in GP needed a good amount of focused time commitment, the sort of thing at a premium in the modern attention economy of tech.
- girvo 2y ago> I learned so much, eventually being able to replace hardware As a young teenager in the early-mid 2000s, I learned the hard way what the little standoffs are for by killing a motherboard by screwing it directly into the steel case :') Never made that mistake again, that's for sure. And I share all the same experiences as yourself
- interludead 2y agoI did the exact same thing - mounted a shiny new board straight onto the case, powered it on, and… nothing. Spent hours troubleshooting before realizing I'd basically shorted the whole thing
- xandrius 2y agoThere should be a club for people like us: we learnt the hard way to double-check and never ever fully trust ourselves, especially with hardware connections. The first Mobo I ever purchased with my own money was insta-fried exactly like that, it still hurts a little to think about that.
- hulitu 2y ago> Actions buried deep within menus. Maybe they are though in CS school that every layer of abstraction is better. I don't see other explanation for this level of stupidity.
- brulard 2y agoI share your nostalgia. I did learn a lot by exploring Amiga OS and later Windows 98 without anyone to help or an internet connection. It was fun, but we had time to spend back then. Today time feels much more scarce and I no longer appreciate if I have to learn by trial and error. Now it feels like you have to keep up with the tech progress, which is crazy fast. And youth has too many things to do that are more appealing, like social media, youtubes, loads of games etc. For them the exploration of OS or some software is not attractive anymore.