Well having come across project managers who can just about type with 2 fingers I can believe some of it. But who would ever want to write on an on screen keyboard over a physical one, there is no feesback and although it is ok for short pieces of text I have just spent today writing a 20 page technical guide to configure a system and would not do that without a proper keyboard.
Kids of today (mutter mutter)
Mind you the gui on programs gets worse with every iteration, most of the time I think they add new features just to make it more complicated and generate complaints....
There *used* to be a "sort of" standard for the Windows UI (for that is what we are discussing here). I remember taking a Win 3.1 programming class, and there were some fairly well thought out standards for how to do things (e.g.: F1 for Help, right click for info). The world has moved on, and Microsoft with it. But it's still almost universally accepted that holding down the CTRL key and spinning the scroll wheel on a mouse will zoom in and out on your screen, isn't it?
However, it's anyone's guess as to how to add a line space in Teams vs Excel vs whatever other MS apps you're using, where a simple "Enter" will end your input and send the message. ALT+ENTER for Teams and SHIFT+ENTER for Excel, or do I have it backwards? Never mind, it will change with the next release anyway, because consistent UI behavior isn't edgy enough for today's users...
Happy Christmas/Solstice/Hannukah/Kwanzaa to you all!
One of my favorite "training in the early days" yarns was when I was teaching a group of pretty talented art directors and "compositors" how to use QuarkXPress, and like you, a keyboard and mouse for the first time. The first task was to draw out a text box and enter some text. As I walked around observing and coaching, one gentlemen was hunched over the keyboard with both index fingers hunting for something elusive. I watched for a bit ... he did have a word in the text box .. so I asked "what are you looking for?" He said, "I know how to enter the words but how do add a space between the words"? He was looking for key labeled "space" I suppose. I remember gently explaining that "big long key in the center bottom" and how it was bigger than all other keys because you need to hit it so often, best case with either thumb and all other keys with the fingers. I so loved this article! Brought it all back.
Dec 23, 2022·edited Dec 23, 2022Liked by Alistair Dabbs
"it can be exasperating to meet someone who evidently has never shown the slightest measure of curiosity in the tools they’re given at work"
A story I've told elsewhere, but when I was in the rat race at the time when PCs were first appearing on secretaries desks, having replaced actual typewriters, there were a lot of tears.
Fast forward several years, and whereas once it was almost a sackable offence to type anything yourself rather than have a secretary do it, now it was almost sackable not to do it yourself.
Somewhere part way through that, my company switched from DOS-based WordPerfect to Word for Windows. The secretaries literally were in tears over it, because it turned out they all had little pocket books with the slash codes needed to make text bold, underline, save, retrieve, print, etc. in WP in them. Of course, none of those applied to Word.
Then, somewhat later, I was updating one of the factory SOPs one time and was having trouble moving text around and formatting it. When I turned on the formatting code view, I discovered why.
The secretary who'd originally typed it had used the space bar to arrange text into columns, and a <cr> at the end of each line on the screen. So you weren't formatting paragraphs and sentences as such - it was humongous blocks of spaces and <cr>s with the sentences mixed in between them.
It turned out they had all been using word processors exactly like they did the typewriters. No one had ever tried to explain the difference, and I personally doubt that anyone knew what it was anyway at that time (the company was cheapskate and always did its own in-house training).
It took bloody ages to reformat that SOP, and then I discovered all the older ones were exactly the same.
“Software developers just assume their UX design is so intuitive that everything must be obvious. Well, no it isn’t, tossheads. Your software is shit and it’s getting harder to use with every shit update.”
This. A thousand times This. Especially SAP. I think someone in management taped a punchcard to a screen and said “give me that”. I refer honourable readers to search “Big Ball of Mud” and read and digest the brilliant paper that comes up.
Re: I was amazed to discover that some of them had never fully explored the QuarkXPress program menus or tool settings
Years ago I was designing a piece of software that would replace a commercial offering we were using then but that was incompatible with Windows 7. I sat with the user who showed me how it worked and what they did daily, "press F3 once then type something then press F3 twice and check the values, then press F3 n times", etc. - each time F3 was pressed, the program advanced to the next part of the workflow.
I then asked how to go back to the previous screen in case you wanted to change or check something.
"Well, you press F3 until you get to main screen again and continue pressing F3 until the screen you missed is shown", was the answer.
I looked a bit closer for a second, then pressed F2. And, to the amazement of the user, the previous screen was presented.
Amazingly, although the user had been using that program for over 10 years, they'd never read the instructions shown at the bottom of every screen!
As you may dimly recall, I worked at that first computer mag of yours myself. (After reading your columns for months, have wanted to get in touch to hail a fellow survivor, but I haven’t found an actual e-mail address. Obfuscation of the latter a sign of the times, of course.) I had the first mouse there, but only because the lovely Sue Lowe of Text 100 came by to install it so I would have one for my review of Microsoft Word. Happy wishes for the holidays for you and yours from California!
About showing no curiosity about your tools, I'll raise you embedded engineers with two decades or more experience of writing C, being absolutely stumped by any non-rodent oriented interface, e.g. Git CLI.
After having been through purgatory with "Platform Independent - Model Driven Development" and "Executable UML", I'm so glad my current work has my primary workflow as writing C++(20) through SSH > tmux > vim.
It's not just nostalgia talking. Sometimes. Not always, of course. But sometimes, the old ways really are better.
Despite evidence from my family to the contrary, I'm not completely daft. But the sheer insanity in these articles makes me understand that real life is actually not an illusion, only visible by me.
Thanks Dabbsy, for reminding us that fools are so clever, devious and all around us. I'm not ruling myself completely out of that set, but it is heartening to read that others are similarly affected by 'the world' and (ha ha) 'users'.
Season's Greetings to you and your observant readers/commenters.
I can relate to so much of this week's ASIFW post Alistair! Beautifully put (as always). Have a lovely Christmas.
I can' relate to so much of this week's ASIFW! Beautifully put (as always) Have a great Christmas Alistair.
Well having come across project managers who can just about type with 2 fingers I can believe some of it. But who would ever want to write on an on screen keyboard over a physical one, there is no feesback and although it is ok for short pieces of text I have just spent today writing a 20 page technical guide to configure a system and would not do that without a proper keyboard.
Kids of today (mutter mutter)
Mind you the gui on programs gets worse with every iteration, most of the time I think they add new features just to make it more complicated and generate complaints....
left and right margins on a typewriter! Arrgh, I had buried those memories for good! I'll be sending my therapists bill...
I'll wait until after the New Year.
Merry X-Mas Dabbsy
There *used* to be a "sort of" standard for the Windows UI (for that is what we are discussing here). I remember taking a Win 3.1 programming class, and there were some fairly well thought out standards for how to do things (e.g.: F1 for Help, right click for info). The world has moved on, and Microsoft with it. But it's still almost universally accepted that holding down the CTRL key and spinning the scroll wheel on a mouse will zoom in and out on your screen, isn't it?
However, it's anyone's guess as to how to add a line space in Teams vs Excel vs whatever other MS apps you're using, where a simple "Enter" will end your input and send the message. ALT+ENTER for Teams and SHIFT+ENTER for Excel, or do I have it backwards? Never mind, it will change with the next release anyway, because consistent UI behavior isn't edgy enough for today's users...
Happy Christmas/Solstice/Hannukah/Kwanzaa to you all!
One of my favorite "training in the early days" yarns was when I was teaching a group of pretty talented art directors and "compositors" how to use QuarkXPress, and like you, a keyboard and mouse for the first time. The first task was to draw out a text box and enter some text. As I walked around observing and coaching, one gentlemen was hunched over the keyboard with both index fingers hunting for something elusive. I watched for a bit ... he did have a word in the text box .. so I asked "what are you looking for?" He said, "I know how to enter the words but how do add a space between the words"? He was looking for key labeled "space" I suppose. I remember gently explaining that "big long key in the center bottom" and how it was bigger than all other keys because you need to hit it so often, best case with either thumb and all other keys with the fingers. I so loved this article! Brought it all back.
I remember that when mouses began to proliferate somebody wrote that they did not want to live a hand to mouse existence.
Merry Christmas
I'm considering signing up for one of your training seminars just to concoct the silliest tech questions imaginable.
-Oh, and happiest of holidays!
Who need a space bar when you’ve got a hammer???
Solves all problems especially when you treat everything as a nail.!!’
Then you ring tec support, tell them it’s broken, get your pay check, and it’s beer time, off down the pub with a warm feeling of a job well done!!’ 👍
"it can be exasperating to meet someone who evidently has never shown the slightest measure of curiosity in the tools they’re given at work"
A story I've told elsewhere, but when I was in the rat race at the time when PCs were first appearing on secretaries desks, having replaced actual typewriters, there were a lot of tears.
Fast forward several years, and whereas once it was almost a sackable offence to type anything yourself rather than have a secretary do it, now it was almost sackable not to do it yourself.
Somewhere part way through that, my company switched from DOS-based WordPerfect to Word for Windows. The secretaries literally were in tears over it, because it turned out they all had little pocket books with the slash codes needed to make text bold, underline, save, retrieve, print, etc. in WP in them. Of course, none of those applied to Word.
Then, somewhat later, I was updating one of the factory SOPs one time and was having trouble moving text around and formatting it. When I turned on the formatting code view, I discovered why.
The secretary who'd originally typed it had used the space bar to arrange text into columns, and a <cr> at the end of each line on the screen. So you weren't formatting paragraphs and sentences as such - it was humongous blocks of spaces and <cr>s with the sentences mixed in between them.
It turned out they had all been using word processors exactly like they did the typewriters. No one had ever tried to explain the difference, and I personally doubt that anyone knew what it was anyway at that time (the company was cheapskate and always did its own in-house training).
It took bloody ages to reformat that SOP, and then I discovered all the older ones were exactly the same.
“Software developers just assume their UX design is so intuitive that everything must be obvious. Well, no it isn’t, tossheads. Your software is shit and it’s getting harder to use with every shit update.”
This. A thousand times This. Especially SAP. I think someone in management taped a punchcard to a screen and said “give me that”. I refer honourable readers to search “Big Ball of Mud” and read and digest the brilliant paper that comes up.
Re: I was amazed to discover that some of them had never fully explored the QuarkXPress program menus or tool settings
Years ago I was designing a piece of software that would replace a commercial offering we were using then but that was incompatible with Windows 7. I sat with the user who showed me how it worked and what they did daily, "press F3 once then type something then press F3 twice and check the values, then press F3 n times", etc. - each time F3 was pressed, the program advanced to the next part of the workflow.
I then asked how to go back to the previous screen in case you wanted to change or check something.
"Well, you press F3 until you get to main screen again and continue pressing F3 until the screen you missed is shown", was the answer.
I looked a bit closer for a second, then pressed F2. And, to the amazement of the user, the previous screen was presented.
Amazingly, although the user had been using that program for over 10 years, they'd never read the instructions shown at the bottom of every screen!
As you may dimly recall, I worked at that first computer mag of yours myself. (After reading your columns for months, have wanted to get in touch to hail a fellow survivor, but I haven’t found an actual e-mail address. Obfuscation of the latter a sign of the times, of course.) I had the first mouse there, but only because the lovely Sue Lowe of Text 100 came by to install it so I would have one for my review of Microsoft Word. Happy wishes for the holidays for you and yours from California!
About showing no curiosity about your tools, I'll raise you embedded engineers with two decades or more experience of writing C, being absolutely stumped by any non-rodent oriented interface, e.g. Git CLI.
After having been through purgatory with "Platform Independent - Model Driven Development" and "Executable UML", I'm so glad my current work has my primary workflow as writing C++(20) through SSH > tmux > vim.
It's not just nostalgia talking. Sometimes. Not always, of course. But sometimes, the old ways really are better.
Glædelig Jul.
P.S. WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS!!!
Despite evidence from my family to the contrary, I'm not completely daft. But the sheer insanity in these articles makes me understand that real life is actually not an illusion, only visible by me.
Thanks Dabbsy, for reminding us that fools are so clever, devious and all around us. I'm not ruling myself completely out of that set, but it is heartening to read that others are similarly affected by 'the world' and (ha ha) 'users'.
Season's Greetings to you and your observant readers/commenters.
Thanks for all the laughs! ..A very happy Christmas to you and yours and to all your readers!