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Question of the Month: What design feature do you think is overused, something added out of habit rather than real need?

cstanton

What's a design element or feature you think is overused, something people include out of habit rather than necessary?

When planning a project, it's easy to add unnecessary features in the design phase. These are the "just in case" or "that's how it's always done," but sometimes, those extra elements can add cost, complexity, or waste without really improving the project.

Bonus question: What design feature do you believe is underused?

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  • Underused is great question. One thing I find annoying is the practise of minimizing the number of buttons, which ends up making the user interface slow, complex and non-intuitive. Think household thermostats. Does anybody remember how to program a VCR? Buttons can also be overused - like up/down buttons when a volume knob or slider is faster and more intuitive. Remember when you could just rotate a dial to the temperature you wanted.

    Remember when microcontrollers and SBCs came with a "monitor"  - a supervisory program that would allow direct control of all I/O or examining/altering memory. I miss that functionality. 

  • in reply to dougw
    dougw said:
    Remember when microcontrollers and SBCs came with a "monitor"  - a supervisory program that would allow direct control of all I/O or examining/altering memory. I miss that functionality. 

    This. This is why computers should still have front panels. Plus you get a free light show.

    Why yes, I do have a PiDP-10. obsolescence.wixsite.com/.../pidp10

  • in reply to bradfordmiller

    While at university, I was so hungry to learn more about computers, I took a night course at a local community college to see what they offered. It turned out they were still using PDP8 (at Uni we were using PDP11) and our first assignment was entering a program using the front panel toggle switches. Later the course allowed the use of paper tape to enter programs, for those that remember that technology.

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  • in reply to bradfordmiller

    While at university, I was so hungry to learn more about computers, I took a night course at a local community college to see what they offered. It turned out they were still using PDP8 (at Uni we were using PDP11) and our first assignment was entering a program using the front panel toggle switches. Later the course allowed the use of paper tape to enter programs, for those that remember that technology.

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  • in reply to dougw

    I did a lot of work with military computers (ruggedized Data General computers) during my first job.  I could entry the 20+ instructions for the paper tape bootloader, on the front panel from memory.  I wrote a bunch of diagnostics, that when running would read the address switches, then display the contents of the address on to the data lights as a sort of "PEAK" to allow be to monitor attached hardware for trouble shooting. Fun times!  I have been so tempted to build a clone of these early computers using a simple microprocessor as a retro display piece.

  • in reply to genebren

    Many early computers can be simulated using simh. The work Oscar has done with obsolescence guaranteed has created ⅔ models for front panels for various DEC machines (8, 11, 10, 1 .. so far) that uses simh running on an RPi. He's also rumored to be working on a TX-2...