Home of the Dutch Gecko

Once again I find myself up into the early hours “working” on stuff that was meant to be completed in a lab. Tonight it’s creating a prototype electronic die. The design was pretty much complete, and I merely needed to create a JEDEC file for use in a Programmable Logic Device. This involves the use of an excellent (I wish HTML included <sarcasm> tags) piece of software called Viewlogic Powerview, which I’d love to give you a link to but both the company and product names are so incredibly generic that Google gives me nothing. Nice marketing.

Powerview is awful. The interface was clearly made using some kind of interface creator software. In turn, this software was clearly developed in the early 60s to run on valve computers and was designed by a team of “highly” trained monkeys with a management team consisting entirely of porpoises. Communication was probably minimal.

Forget everything you know about user interfaces. This thing provides everything that you are familiar with, and then changes it a tiny bit. Want to close that file menu? You have to press escape, you can’t click on it again. Want to quit? Oh right, use the red square (seriously, a red square), not the file menu like in every other piece of software ever.

And now, I know that unix has always been heavily dependent on the famed third mouse button, but Powerview takes it to new levels. Middle mouse used to mean paste. Here it’s everything. If you want to add something, it has to be the middle mouse. You go through the tedious menu to reach your component list, select one with the left button, and then have to place it using middle. This despite left not being able to perform anything at that point, as helpfully pointed out by the status bar which exclaims that “LEFTMOUSE is not bound.” Want to put in an identical component? Tough, gotta click in that component list again. No, not middle dummy, left.

And so I plough on through the clunky clicky hell, constantly switching between keyboard and mouse as if they were a divorced couple and I the family pet. Close that window, open that one. Wrong shortcut key. No that command doesn’t have a shortcut, despite the obvious letter not being in use. No you missed the bound on that button, you selected the window instead, here’s an error message to inform you of your grave mistake. Middle mouse middle mouse middle mouse no how dare you use the scrollwheel just use the button you imbecile.

This software makes me feel stupid and I hate it.

This wonderful distraction was created in the wee hours on Monday 12th March, 2007. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.