> but there is a new breed of software where the functionality set can't be defined in an exhaustive way.
Then fix your bugs so that the functionality set _can_ be defined in an exhaustive way.
Then fix your bugs so that the functionality set _can_ be defined in an exhaustive way.
What I mean is that 'old' software has focussed on giving users lots of tools for users to complete their tasks, and when we talk about UI's we are talking about how to arrange all those tools in a way that is easy for a user to navigate. Users usually have to learn about all the tools that are there, so they know which ones to use (and over time the ones that learn about the existence of all the tools become 'power users').
But 'new' software might be more about completing users tasks for them, and these higher level tasks are the ones that are hard to define because there are so many permutations of what a user might want to do. As the software is helping users more, end-users might not ever need to know about the existence of all of the tools as they are abstracted away.
20 years ago we called the functionality: "record macro". Very few programs implement a subset of it ( record, save, replay) - Hello Vector CANoe/Denoe, but not the whole ( loading, editing macros), again Hello Vector CANoe/Denoe.
Microsoft was very close to have a "Set as default" button in Settings dialogues in Office but, then, "they improved".
Going back to the 'help me calculate the financial implications of a house purchase' example - making a macro might make your work repeatable, but doesn't avoid users needing to learn excel or needing to put in the effort to build the spreadsheet.