I sometimes use retro computers and marvel at how well the software for those machines runs. The only difference i can guess is that the average developer ability was higher.
Also, I strongly feel like old software "runs better" because neither the OS nor the software itself practically did anything. The security model was "be a good citizen." Graphics programming meant writing to a big buffer and then copying it to the screen. Oh your native language isn't representable in ASCII? It reads right-to-left? You are colorblind and need to apply a color transform to the display? Too bad. Those things aren't "clean and simple" code and the team of 30-something 1337 guys that wrote wasn't imagining you when deciding how the program would work.
Also it's not like these programs aren't still available. Did you write this comment using lynx? Do you do your finances with "gnome spreadsheet?" Do you listen to music with WinAmp 2.0? Do you moan in frustration every time you find a long, informative Wikipedia article, undoubtedly written by someone who doesn't understand cache lines, or even CSS? I don't even though I used to (well not the last one). I've moved on to objectively better things.
We're way, way better off with lower barriers and increased participation because it's additive. Despite electron being a thing or Visual Studio ushering in an era of "GUI builder + simple callback" apps, suckless still exists.
In terms of the greater concept of technology adoption, mandated facial recognition and apps for accessing crucial government/financial services only started making sense once smartphones had become useful enough to the average person from being an objectively better way of consuming information, such that nearly everyone decided to purchase and use one. That was because so many engineers and other people had eyes on the technology given its objective utility, and they all contributed to its uprising.
Despite this, I highly doubt that the elitist technological separation that suckless proposes would ever come to pass in the real world. We're simply too smart to not find better ways of manipulating burnt sand on our own, whether or not they exist to serve some powerful entity's ulterior motive.
If those 1337 guys were tasked with writing software to accommodate those use cases, I’m certain it would be better than software today that accommodates those use cases
> Also it's not like these programs aren't still available. Did you write this comment using lynx? Do you do your finances with "gnome spreadsheet?" Do you listen to music with WinAmp 2.0?
I was referring to 80s software, not 90s software. In terms of architecture, 90s software is closer to the software of today than the software of the 80s.