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Comment by RadiozRadioz | Hacker News Reader

> I think that’s probably because the 1990s styling is part of what makes PuTTY what it is – “reassuringly old-fashioned”

This is definitely something that attracts me to PuTTY. There _is_ something reassuring about applications that look the way PuTTY does - maybe the aged look projects stability due to lack of change, maybe it's just the additional cohesion from using OS primitives, I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I find the opposite to be true for apps with a "modern" aesthetic; the more material design, rounded corners, transitions, low contrast, high padding I see, the more I experience feelings of distrust and skepticism.

I'm not qualified to psychoanalyze it, but I'd hazard that it's not an uncommon interpretation in some user groups, given the pockets of fans of PuTTY-esque design.

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Software using the win32 graphics primitives is just so incredibly fast. If it looks like those, there is of course still the possibility that it wastes time elsewhere (or in an exact simulation of those looks), but it might also just be the real thing, as instantaneous as the old "just load a file into the text control, \n without preceding \r be damned!" notepad. (I miss having that notepad, it was so properly being just what it was, without any pretentions of being something different)

I think I saw a notepad reimplementation in assembly once: half a screen (or what felt like half a screen) of glue code to plug the file access into the text control, might have even had the ctrl+h menu and dialog. Just like the glue code python prides itself of, only that it was straight assembly, zero dependencies except for the DLLs for file access and the bare bones standard control set.

It's remarkable how Windows had a native toolkit that worked great, but when it needed modernizing (especially for higher resolutions) they repeatedly drove off a cliff in weird directions which are much, much heavier and also locked down awkwardly like UWP.

The other day for meme purposes I was trying to write a "retro Windows style Bluesky client". I did get a timeline displaying but it was clear that I'd exceeded the point at which the toolkit was going to help and I was going to have to do my own word wrap etc for owner-draw listbox entries. It's still a charming aesthetic.

>the additional cohesion from using OS primitives

I miss using win32 software. It was the best: simple, quick to render, clean and information-dense. Now everything uses large "modern Windows" widgets or, even worse, Electron.

If Microsoft had instead created a modern alternative for Win32 that was equally performant and bullshit-free, Electron would have never seen the light of day.

Putty and Winamp are two softwares that I've used for 20+ years on Windows and that still feel the same. They don't get old or outdated.

> They don't get old or outdated.

SSH is a windows builtin now, so they do get outdated. :/

> the more material design… I see, the more I experience feelings of distrust and skepticism.

One of the tenets of material design seems to be that a rectangle should not reveal its true nature until you click on it. It might be a button, a text box, or just a rectangle!

Any reason for that?

The reason is that.. it's not, actually!

Like, individual websites might do their own weird takes and have their own design systems which are mistaken for 'material design', but I don't think you can fault Google for making text boxes too similar to buttons.

Text fields https://m3.material.io/components/text-fields/overview - underlined or outlined, have their title text

Buttons https://m3.material.io/components/all-buttons - fully colored or outlined, may have a shadow, more rounded, differently-styled

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