[eholk]

Bjarne Stroustrup is 74, so he probably counts as a senior too at this point, although surely more technically literate than the stereotypes.

Still, I'm in my early 40s and I find myself baffled when I help my mom with her iPhone. I've been an Android guy ever since that was an option.

[xatax]

He was around 40 years old when he said it and he wasn't talking about smartphones - at least what we call smartphones today.

> "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone".

> I said that after a frustrating attempt to use a "feature-rich" telephone sometime around 1990. I'm sure the sentiment wasn't original, and probably not even the overall phrasing; someone must have thought of that before me.

https://www.stroustrup.com/quotes.html

[flomo]

He worked for AT&T at the time, right? Those corporate PBX systems had all sorts of crazy features which people mastered by pounding the 12 keys really fast. And he was probably on the bleeding edge of that. (In many places digital voice mail commonly predated email.)

edit to agree: obv Stroustrup in 1990 was not talking about your cell phone.

[vasco]

A lot of nerve from the guy that invented the hardest programming language to use right, and the easiest to use wrong.

[epolanski]

Even Androids are so confusing to be honest.

Just recently I wanted to change the default AI assistant from Gemini to Perplexity and after having found the option once, somehow, it took me ages to find it again.

[arvinsim]

I guess the strategy is that if you can't force behaviors on your users, obfuscate and confuse the alternatives until they follow your intended path.