What I mean is the new users of the 2020's don't necessarily understand better the old paradigms. My daughters are more comfortable on Gnome 3 because it is closer than their parents phone UIs.
This is true and my intuition may betray me here. But on the other hand, Windows 95 was perfectly useable to people who had never sat down at a computer before. It was obvious where the buttons where, and some programs even had the little question-mark icon, which you could click on, then click on any UI surface, and you got a text explanation of what that button or whatever did.
This got me thinking about of another thing: PCs (broadly speaking) are becoming less popular (not in absolute terms perhaps) compared to glass slab devices. But on the other hand, when people do real productivity stuff on touch devices, they often do PC-ish workflows, using an external keyboard and such. I don't know what to make of this. I think a real IDE made for touch from the ground up could be incredibly powerful. Like a Lisp (under the hood), where there are no parens, just touch-enabled rectangles you zoom into, one for each function.
> But on the other hand, Windows 95 was perfectly useable to people who had never sat down at a computer before.
As did Gnome 1.4 on my grandmother's first computer (an old 486 we saved from the bin).
People who never sat down on a computer have always been the easiest in term of adoption because they aren't limited by old habits, muscle memory and resistance to change.
These old GUIs are eminently discoverable.