The worst invention in computer science ...

P

PretzelsAndBeer

Member
... has to be the icon. Hieroglyphics is a 3000 year old technology. Early civilized people invented the alphabet because hieroglyphics suck. Who in the world thought it would be a good idea to litter a computer interface with dozens of stupid little meaningless cartoon pictures? Idiotic! I'm no technophobe, but I'm convinced computer use would be at least a third more efficient if pictograms were left behind with the prehistoric cave artists.

And don't get me started on Microsoft's little talking paper clip.

End of rant. Carry on.
 
People who think Steve Jobs is god :D
Windows Vista - why?! Bring on Windows 7.
How computers became boring after 1995 (think back to all the platforms we had in the 80's/early 90's).
Daisy wheel/Dot Matrix printers which chew up paper and aligning those cursed perferated holes.
Mouse balls.
 
I think most ppl can parse the meaning of a glyph much faster than they can read. I rather like the Eye of Horus icon myself...

The paper clip? Well, the paperclip dies. Slowly. Connected to a car battery.
 
nucat78 said:
I think most ppl can parse the meaning of a glyph much faster than they can read. I rather like the Eye of Horus icon myself.
Click to expand...

There I disagree. You don't know what an icon means until you scroll over is and read the text. Or in the case of the MS desktop, all the names are right there under the icons, so the icons take up screen space and add exactly zero information.

Now to be clear, I'm not going to criticize people who like icons and prefer to use them. But for me, they're speed bumps. I would rather have the option, for one example, of get rid of the dozen or so icons on my desktop and just have a list on the left side of the screen taking up about a sixth of the screen space.

Many of the applications I use in engineering make use of strange little symbols in different contexts that probably mean something to the sales reps, or to people who have taken expensive training courses, but don't mean anything to me. But if I can use an application effectively and efficiently without knowing what most of those little doodads mean, how important can they be? They may actually slow you down because it makes you think the application is trying to tell you something that needs a response of some kind.

Sorry for the rant. I just get fed up with software companies trying to turn everything into a "compu-entertainment" experience.
 
I love icons and pics, the funnier the better!
The icons help people with good visual memory to learn and navigate around applications very effectively. If you do not get any help or use from icons, you just the type that memorize differently, and visual memory is not very helpful for you. However, about 60% of computer users have memorize easier when icons are presented. Lots of research is done on this topic, which is the reason that many apps use icons excessively. Another questions is how good icons are, but most of the time they help to navigate better than words. There is a reason they say that the picture is better than a million of words.
 
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