Well now, that becomes a problem as well. After all, the pencil and paper
had their own issues. Take, for example, the problems involved with
excessive angular force on the pencil tip. This can just bring the whole
application to a halt...especially if you're missing the "pencil sharpener"
add-on. Then there's the bug of multiple deletions of the same record,
which can completely destroy that section of the paper, typically resulting
in an unusable medium which must be re-copied from scratch (possibly leading
to a recursive problem). Not to mention the vast array of pencil versions
out there, many of which are entirely unsuitable for the uses to which the
user wishes to put them - e.g., using a fine arts pencil for writing
purposes.
While I'm sure I could come up with a number of other issues besides, as you
can see, software and hardware limitations pre-date MS, and no solution is
without its share of problems.
That said, I agree with the general concept that MS has been moving away
from what most customers want, particularly the programming professional,
and dumbing down & prettying up a lot of their mainstream software (like
Vista and Office 2007), possibly in an attempt to be more like the Mac (oh
dear!). The departure of VB.NET from traditional VB is another example of
this sort of plugging their ears and going "la la la la la" when programming
professionals complain (while simultaneously listening intently to C
programmers and providing them with a transition venue that they chose not
to provide VB programmers with).
Overall, I'm very unimpressed at the general trend, and sincerely hope they
smarten up in the future. I don't want software that works only the way
THEY want it to, I want software that works the way *I* want it to, and is
flexible enough to also work the way SOMEONE ELSE wants it to as well.
Rob
