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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Taro who wrote (941395)6/19/2016 4:30:40 PM
From: i-node  Read Replies (1) of 1586861
 
In 77, I was working for a microwave communications engineering company. One of the products we had sold on PDP 11 was something called "CFAM" which had been developed for a couple of large companies to use for planning applications. Essentially, it was the framework of a Visicalc-like tool, but without a meaningful user interface. To use it, you had to create the cell formulas and relationships in FORTRAN and compile/link it.

There were several of us who worked with that program, either for in house use or in my case for customers. NONE OF US ever had the idea of putting a user interface on it. A total lack of vision. I'm sure companies all over the country had similar tools. And made the same mistake. Until someone didn't.

Innovation is hard to do. Much harder for me today than it was when I was young.

If you really want innovation let kids tell you how it should be done. The apps I work on today target autistic kids. The most important information I get for user interface design is videos from therapy sessions where I can see what we're "requiring" the kids to do versus what they "want" to do or think they should do. Not only does it create ideas it lets me see what causes them trouble in terms of their own motor skills so the app can be adjusted accordingly.

DEC suffered from a lack of child-like vision, IMO. So did we.
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