The greatest invention in IT

Not a useful note and more of a personal opinion then factual, but beyond the inventors of the Internet or any hardware has to be the following notion from IBM:

a 1976 research report by Lance A. Miller and John C. Thomas of IBM, noted that "It would be quite useful to permit users to 'take back' at least the immediately preceding command (by issuing some special 'undo' command)."

Source: Behavioral Issues in the Use of Interactive Systems.

If you've guessed it, my vote goes for whoever invented the "Undo" button: cross-platform, multi-lingual, future-proof and as everlasting as human error.


More?
"By [undoing] repeatedly, you can gradually work your way back to a point before your mistake. This is convenient if you've made a mistake four or five commands back. It is marginally useful if you've made a mistake twenty or thirty characters back. And it is completely useless if your mistake is ancient history." - Learning GNU Emacs (page 42)

Undoing can itself be undone. After having undone an action, you can redo it... - Docs.Gimp.Org

Synonym: redound

Latin - Etymology - From unda ("a wave")

Category: IT Support :: Article: 436

Add comment

Your rating:

Submit

Credit where Credit is Due:


Feel free to copy, redistribute and share this information. All that we ask is that you attribute credit and possibly even a link back to this website as it really helps in our search engine rankings.

Disclaimer: Please note that the information provided on this website is intended for informational purposes only and does not represent a warranty. The opinions expressed are those of the author only. We recommend testing any solutions in a development environment before implementing them in production. The articles are based on our good faith efforts and were current at the time of writing, reflecting our practical experience in a commercial setting.

Thank you for visiting and, as always, we hope this website was of some use to you!

Kind Regards,

Joel Lipman
www.joellipman.com

Please publish modules in offcanvas position.