Really old guy prospective ... computer programmers were originally mathematicians and engineers who thought in machine language and believed in the KISS principle. Programmers didn't become wizards until they stopped being scientists and simply became coders with delusions of grandeur.
There was a series of fantasy books in the 90's where a fantasy world needed a powerful wizard but pulled a programmer instead. Thankfully magic works a lot like early DOS.
The Wiz series by Rick Cook. No idea if still in print.
For a moment I thought you were talking about the 1980’s Barbara Hambly books. Wizard world meets computer programmer to save both worlds. Now I’ll have to go find the Rick Cook books.
my recall of this trend start was when Apple had a Chaplin look alike in their ads and IBM ran an ad mocking them for it going “computers aren’t -fun-, those guys are so stupid”
Same period of time where it was fully expected that the average user should have some basic ability to interact with the machine itself and not just a carefully designed interface
several times! and it's not only elderly people, it's increasingly common for very young people
i propose we just go back to xp where it is explicitly stated.
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The Wiz series by Rick Cook. No idea if still in print.
it hasn’t come back since
https://8325.org/haiku/
i propose we just go back to xp where it is explicitly stated.