Blowing the Dust Off of an IBM AS/400 Server

Re:Blowing the Dust Off of an IBM AS/400 Server by kmarc on Monday January 14, 2019 @02:09AM (#18901224)

Well, Windows (and all window-based, graphical UI) encourages you to use the _mouse pointer_ with it's clumsy properties like navigating a visual field and upon locating an interactive element, using at most 5 different action buttons (clicks and scrolls).

Compared to that, these old systems were modal (edit, browse, etc modes) and keyboard-based with it's ~100 action buttons, where pixel-by-pixel navigating was not needed.

From an efficiency standpoint, petting a computer with mouse-based navigation is ridiculous. It might help a newbie until they explore a software's features but later on it's a waste of time. And your mother knew this very well.

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Re:Blowing the Dust Off of an IBM AS/400 Server by CamperBob2 on Monday January 14, 2019 @06:20AM (#18902208)

Those old modal interfaces were dead ends that ultimately didn't scale. Try using a CAD program sometime, or for that matter even a spreadsheet, without a mouse.

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Re:Blowing the Dust Off of an IBM AS/400 Server by kmarc on Tuesday January 15, 2019 @01:34AM (#18909228)

You missed the "pixel by pixel navigation" part.

There are obviously a plethora of use cases (mostly graphic design software, games, etc) where a pointing device would benefit far much better.

OTOH I would love to see a vim-like excel/spreadsheet software.

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