>>>As for the process of making styrofoam cups, there was no goldplating. It was designed for a particular purpose, to replace the cardboard or thin plastic cups for hot drinks and heavier plastic stoneware (which cracked a lot after being washed repeatedly and had to be replaced frequently). It has absolutely no unnecessary designed features (except the "it's hot warning", but that wasn't there by design).
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>>It seems to me that to many, all advances are nothing more than gold-plating on an existing process. Previous processes are always thought of as good enough and advances are always thought of as superfluous. Unfortunately too often, those who prefer the previous process have gotten into such a rut, that a better way can't be demonstrated, suggested or even hinted at without carrying a flak jacket and an M-16. How tiresome has our race become?
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>I was fighting that battle many times, when we were introducing computers in places where they saw them directly for the first time. So many times I was just forced to emulate the manual process and all the controls introduced to check it, even when it meant just totaling the same numbers three ways.
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>I also don't mind changing my ways when there's an obvious advantage, or not even so obvious but reachable after some thinking. But there's improvement and there's goldplating, the superfluous feature that's introduced just for the sake of adding a marketable feature. And there's also the fake change, like the endless improvement of toothpaste - imagine how different they must be now from those we used as kids, if every manufacturer was introducing new and improved ones every couple of years.
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>And specifically in programming, there are many features introduced just because someone thought it was a neat idea, when actually there was no demand for it. It's a valuable lesson I got from Steven Black.
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>The most recent example: I am looking for a new laptop, my old HP is dying a slow death, presently in a coma, the video chip needs a "reflow" (i.e. heating up until the soldering points melt and hopefully catch again). I was looking at a Toshiba, and then discovered they are advertising it with two new important features: simplified login and extended MRU list. The first one is explained as the camera doing a face recognition, CSI style, and the other as tracking every file I opened in the last three months. Huh? The camera is turned on without my permission? There's a logger that tracks whatever I'm doing? I don't want a machine which will spy on me, I want a simple damn laptop. Toshiba is blacklisted now, for getting the idea in the first place and then even doing it.

What's the big deal, Dragan? We can all see your face and follow your keystrokes ;-)

(Don't you wish Philip K. Dick had been around for the computer age?)