On tech forums like r/linux or hackernews, you’ll frequently see posts by (presumably) old guys reminiscing about how great the user interface of their youth was.

“Oh how tasteful were these pixel art icons!”

“How utilitarian and consistent were the 3D effects!”

“How very intuitive are these menus!”

“It’s all gone downhill since $PRODUCT. It’s all flat and empty and useless now!”

Bollocks. These user interfaces sucked. The menus were a mess, because trying to shove 50 random items into 6 hierarchical categories, two of which are preordained to be “File” and “Edit”, cannot be done in any way that isn’t arbitrary and confusing. Thus you looked through all the little menus with your terrible mouse hoping to find something that sounded like it might be what you need, trying not to make a sudden move that made the submenu disappear.

Under the menu bar were between 30 and 200 tiny pixel art icons. They were just as incomprehensible as today’s minimalist ones, only there were more of them and most of them looked like ass.

Oh and so many popup windows. Everything you did created a popup window. Why does the settings popup only use one third of the screen while having three tabs? Why can I see my document underneath it, half-obscured, but I can’t actually click on anything there? Why do half the operations create an “OK” popup for me to click on?

Nothing about this was “functional” and yet it also looked grey and cramped and ugly. Like it was designed by C++ programmers (who by their choice of programming language have already proven that their opinion cannot be trusted, especially not in matters involving good taste), which of course it was.

Fucking brain worms, all of them.