I think motif was fine for its time, but definitely not much better than OpenLook.

However, 30 years ago, developing a standard SunOS app with devGuide was the most enjoyable and productive programming I've ever experienced. Simply layout your GUI, link actions to methods, generate code, fill in the abstracted methods, compile and run. I didn't have to learn X or any other bloated low level graphics library.

AFAIK, nothing has been easier, especially XCode.

I used a machine that had 8MB of RAM and a huge b&w monitor. One day I found out it would crash if your process forked more than 127 times. These things were so cool at the time but are nothing compared to a Raspberry Pi.

I appreciate this comment for reviving memories of pine and lynx and all of that

> I do blame them, along with the rise of Java ...for convincing me to drop out of computer science and switch to Computational Math for my bachelors degree.

I avoided studying CS for this reason: I saw my girlfriend's Java textbooks and thought if I had to appreciate this, I wasn't cut out to be a programmer, and stuck to network engineering. Years later, after 'Gang of Four' style OOP started dying, I have some code in a new things people use here everyday.

I was spoilt by SGI and their wonderful interface, where every detail was awesomely cool. The Sun machines were just old-fashioned at this superficial but important level of how it all looked, but only if you knew better, and that meant experience of SGI. In the world of IRIX, we had CPU-eater desktop wallpaper, meanwhile, on Sun, you had some badly drawn window decorations.

I imagine this to be the awful GUI that you speak of.

I say look and feel is superficial, however, when you have to learn a variant of UNIX with slightly different command line switches to the UNIX you know, with an interface worse than even Windows (3.11), for it to run dog slow, a lot of copium is needed. A poor interface gets in the way of what you are trying to do, a cool interface just lets you get on with it.