I saw a short post about fundamental HCI principles being ignored by modern software. I've seen similar sentiments before.
It confuses me. It's not at all how I remember computers. At least computers as far back as the mid-90s.
Every Windows machine I had until the full antivirus edition of Windows Defender broke due to (presumably, you never really could tell for sure) a virus and had to be reinstalled at least once in its lifetime. Old desktop software often broke and couldn't be run anymore because it wasn't being updated. Java screamed at me for updates constantly. We used to wiggle the mouse to try and get websites to load faster. Getting sound to work consistently in games was often a dice roll. PDFs used to contain viruses! And we solved that one with fuckin JavaScript!!
I often feel like arguments about the decline of modern software usability take a very narrow view of what usability is. As if raised borders on a button are more important than not crashing your entire computer? The computers I remember had tons of issues that more or less don't happen anymore. We've picked up new issues along the way, sure, but like my computers haven't hard-crashed in a very long time, and websites from 15 years ago are much more likely to work in modern browsers than applications from 15 years ago are on a modern OS. I genuinely think the totality of user experience has improved significantly.
I do agree that older systems were less complex and more learnable than the systems of today, but I don't think many people actually want to learn these systems. The dream of learning the patterns of your operating system and then being proficient in most software that followed those patterns was never really a thing once GUIs came around—even back then the UIs were complex enough to need learning even if they used OS-default buttons. And people would rather learn their favorite websites or programs and get on with their day, because their goal is not to be good at computers. Their goal is to install Minecraft mods, make good Tumblr memes, record a video in Garry's mod of Shadow the Hedgehog defeating the skibidi toilets, etc.
I'm curious if other people have a similar view of what computing in the past was like, or if their own experiences bear out this image of the usable past.