Nah. Green screens were great. Stuff today is crap.
How does a user interface? For a web site, primarily with a mouse. So, single touch input. For green screen they have an array of dedicated individual simultaneous input devices (known as "keys"). In addition, green screen often provides near-immediate response, whereas touchscreens can suffer from lag either in the physical interface or the unfortunate multiprocess operating system. Finally, green screen was designed to step quickly through the interface, where web requires lots of hunting around for what you want to do.
You simply can't interface better with an application than a single process dedicated application using fixed multiple inputs with immediate response. It's like web pages are a cart and horse and green screen is a race car.
The first job I took right out of college (I was kinda out of money and needed a job immediately) was at a polling company. You know, the obnoxious kids who call and say, "If an election were held tomorrow..."
Anyway, the place still used green screen terminals in 2006 (Mmm, with mechanical keyboards attached). In most cases, the only input required was a single number for each response, so once I'd memorized a script and the responses, I could get through a survey without looking at either the screen or the terminal.
Eventually the company shut down, and needing another job right away, I went to another polling company, who used a web interface for some reason. So there I had to use a vintage mouse (...which obviously did not bring the same joy as a vintage keyboard) to click radio buttons and check boxes and was, frankly, just a painful experience all around.
So, yeah, I agree, there are a surprising number of instances where an old terminal UI is significantly better.
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Nah. Green screens were great. Stuff today is crap.
How does a user interface? For a web site, primarily with a mouse. So, single touch input. For green screen they have an array of dedicated individual simultaneous input devices (known as "keys"). In addition, green screen often provides near-immediate response, whereas touchscreens can suffer from lag either in the physical interface or the unfortunate multiprocess operating system. Finally, green screen was designed to step quickly through the interface, where web requires lots of hunting around for what you want to do.
You simply can't interface better with an application than a single process dedicated application using fixed multiple inputs with immediate response. It's like web pages are a cart and horse and green screen is a race car.
The first job I took right out of college (I was kinda out of money and needed a job immediately) was at a polling company. You know, the obnoxious kids who call and say, "If an election were held tomorrow..."
Anyway, the place still used green screen terminals in 2006 (Mmm, with mechanical keyboards attached). In most cases, the only input required was a single number for each response, so once I'd memorized a script and the responses, I could get through a survey without looking at either the screen or the terminal.
Eventually the company shut down, and needing another job right away, I went to another polling company, who used a web interface for some reason. So there I had to use a vintage mouse (...which obviously did not bring the same joy as a vintage keyboard) to click radio buttons and check boxes and was, frankly, just a painful experience all around.
So, yeah, I agree, there are a surprising number of instances where an old terminal UI is significantly better.