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Comment by Arizhel | Hacker News Reader

The 80s had their high points for sure, but computer interfaces really aren't one of them unless you like green-screen mainframe interfaces.

IMHO, the peak for UIs that are easily usable by regular people with minimal training was back in the mid-to-late-00s. It was before this idiotic flat-UI fad, when UIs had a colorful 3D look to them so they were actually attractive, and also functional (since they were also very discoverable). This was just before everyone suddenly decided that PC UIs needed to be the same as those used on small touchscreens.

However, I will say those 80s mainframe interfaces were extremely functional. For someone who had taken the time to learn it, they could get work done really quickly.

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Are you sure about this? Have you seen what the Xerox Star could do in 1981 (http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html)? Or how about Symbolics Genera? Both of these systems had UI functionality in some ways more advanced than what we have today.

They tried to build smart workstations, where today we have essentially "dumb" operating systems and rely on applications to make them useful. The price we pay for this choice is the poor integration across applications. Web applications are even worse: zero integration across applications coupled with huge security problems.

>Are you sure about this? Have you seen what the Xerox Star could do in 1981

Yes, I'm quite sure. I was alive in the 80s, and I remember what things were like. I sure as hell don't remember any Xerox Stars, but I do remember lots of mainframe terminals at places like banks. I never even heard of the Star until I saw your link, similar to how I only learned about the Xerox Alto many, many years later and only saw one in the Smithsonian museum, never in actual use. Computers like that were rare research projects, not at all representative of how things were in the 80s. Macs are as close as you're going to get to today's UIs for computers which normal people had access to and were actually in any kind of widespread use, and these weren't really popular until the mid/late 80s (and even then were pretty limited as they were expensive).

You are correct about integration and how shitty web applications are though.

I'm convinced that flat got popular because it was cheaper than creating textured graphics. The endless fawning over flat on HN was extremely obnoxious - back in 2013 you couldn't go a day without a "flat design is good design" post ending up on the front page.

Glad to see that there are other people out there who hate it. If there's one example of comically dumb flat design patterns right now, it's that "filter" icon you see around the web that looks like a solid-colored upside down triangle and nothing like a filter.

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