I'm deeply concerned about when my dad is forced to update to Windows 11. He's 80 years old now, bought his first computer about 40 years ago, and used it to write programs to do engineering calculations. So, a fairly technical user from the jump, and has gotten accustomed to everything from 8-bit micros, through DOS and Unix to Windows. And dammit, the shit these companies are pulling is just going to invalidate his prior knowledge and leave him confused and pissed off, calling me for help (like I know jack about how the modern hodgepodge of Windows works). When Don Norman writes that the digital realm is no country for old men, I can see it in my father's increasing bafflement, I can feel it in myself.<p>I think that a big part of the reason why vi (later vim) and Emacs used to enjoy dual status as the canonical hackers' text editors is because their interfaces didn't change much, so skill with them would serve you a lifetime and could be passed to upcoming generations. I recently fired up Xenix in an emulator, and found that I was quite facile in using its copy of vi to manipulate text, because the skills I'd developed on Vim on modern Linux machines translated well all the way back to that ancient editor. Vim added a lot but the fundamentals are the same.<p>When the interface changes, just for the sake of changing, every two years or less, how can you feel like anything you learn will be relevant?