Better software
Posted: Mon 06 Mar 2006, 01:36
Way back in the "olden times" I started programming a Bendix drum computer in binary, eventually graduated to moderate competancy in Fortran, Cobol, and Basic and when the first desktops came out I built and programmed them to run dental offices. Now I am 77 and my programming days are long gone but I am still a computer user. I mistakenly thought that as other younger and far smarter programmers took over I would before now enjoy more user-friendly OS's and apps that were solid, reliable, and easy to learn. I more or less welcomed the advent of GUI, point and click, multi-tasking, and multi-user. Desktop hardware went from slow, low-capacity, $3,000 clunkers to the $300 speed-demon multi-gigabyte marvels of today.
Unfortunately the software went in a different direction. Instead of more user-friendly it got steadily less so. Bloated crashy OS's and equally bloated hard-to-learn overly complex apps. DOS was primitive but decent. It loaded faithfully from a floppy or HD in a short time, it didn't take a degree in computer science to learn the commands, and it always responded the same way to the same commands. It ran apps one at a time, but that just made things simpler for the user and did not seem to harm anything at the time. A simple numbered text list at boot-up was all it took to select what app to run. When a selected app was closed it returned control to the master menu. You were instructed on-screen to hit a number key to select another app or quit DOS, not much different from a mouse click.
Nowadays in the multi-user, multi-tasking world of huge flaky OS's and apps, the apps run in forground, background, sideground, and playground --- real and virtual. They keep stepping on each others dicks and become so tangled all you sometimes get is a series of "Blue Screens of Death" with error messages even experienced programmers can't decipher. I recently bought an HP scanner/printer and just its driver alone in full-fledged mode took up 900 megs of disk space! Apps often won't run if you don't have the latest gee-whiz expensive hardware upgrade. OS's are supposed to be upgraded every month and upscaled every year at the user's expense. ISP's like AOL and other portals take over your whole machine with their proprietary Internet software. Bill Gates left such big holes in his software that Internet crooks could drive through whole herds of worms.
Linux and PuppyLinux to the rescue? Don't I wish, and I appreciate y'all are working hard on it, but I have learned it's not there yet. Some distributions are hardier and more Internet secure, but there are serious drawbacks for ordinary users. Linux is free but often won't marry to peripherals unless you have the time to learn C and program the interface yourself, or at least that seems to be true in Puppy. New Linux distributions and apps come out by the truckload but since they are essentially free the support is thin and not accountable. Manuals, if they exist at all, seem to be written in Hebrew by a crippled Frenchman in Mongolia. The amatuerism in this respect is so visible it hurts. Likewise for on-screen help.
I believe the world would create a rut to anyone's door, if he or she or a group developed a straightforward, robust, reliable, secure op system and set of apps that were well supported, well documented on and off screen, did not require monthly upgrades, and were truly user-friendly. It might be an improved Linux or PuppyLinux, a reformed Microsoft (fat chance), or someone else entirely. It seems to be up for grabs. Any bold takers?
Sincerely,
Robert Williams
Unfortunately the software went in a different direction. Instead of more user-friendly it got steadily less so. Bloated crashy OS's and equally bloated hard-to-learn overly complex apps. DOS was primitive but decent. It loaded faithfully from a floppy or HD in a short time, it didn't take a degree in computer science to learn the commands, and it always responded the same way to the same commands. It ran apps one at a time, but that just made things simpler for the user and did not seem to harm anything at the time. A simple numbered text list at boot-up was all it took to select what app to run. When a selected app was closed it returned control to the master menu. You were instructed on-screen to hit a number key to select another app or quit DOS, not much different from a mouse click.
Nowadays in the multi-user, multi-tasking world of huge flaky OS's and apps, the apps run in forground, background, sideground, and playground --- real and virtual. They keep stepping on each others dicks and become so tangled all you sometimes get is a series of "Blue Screens of Death" with error messages even experienced programmers can't decipher. I recently bought an HP scanner/printer and just its driver alone in full-fledged mode took up 900 megs of disk space! Apps often won't run if you don't have the latest gee-whiz expensive hardware upgrade. OS's are supposed to be upgraded every month and upscaled every year at the user's expense. ISP's like AOL and other portals take over your whole machine with their proprietary Internet software. Bill Gates left such big holes in his software that Internet crooks could drive through whole herds of worms.
Linux and PuppyLinux to the rescue? Don't I wish, and I appreciate y'all are working hard on it, but I have learned it's not there yet. Some distributions are hardier and more Internet secure, but there are serious drawbacks for ordinary users. Linux is free but often won't marry to peripherals unless you have the time to learn C and program the interface yourself, or at least that seems to be true in Puppy. New Linux distributions and apps come out by the truckload but since they are essentially free the support is thin and not accountable. Manuals, if they exist at all, seem to be written in Hebrew by a crippled Frenchman in Mongolia. The amatuerism in this respect is so visible it hurts. Likewise for on-screen help.
I believe the world would create a rut to anyone's door, if he or she or a group developed a straightforward, robust, reliable, secure op system and set of apps that were well supported, well documented on and off screen, did not require monthly upgrades, and were truly user-friendly. It might be an improved Linux or PuppyLinux, a reformed Microsoft (fat chance), or someone else entirely. It seems to be up for grabs. Any bold takers?
Sincerely,
Robert Williams