>Per Inside The Factory:
“Another related topic is the request to reinstate a “Classic UI”. We are evaluating this and the only thing I can tell you at this point is it would be a very large effort with many limitations.
Interpretation:
We’re not really evaluating this. And even if we did, do you have any idea how large the effort would be? Imagine something large. Now double it. Now try to pick it up. Told you. Not to mention that it’s covered with limitations, so if you do touch it – well, if I were you I’d wash my hands right away. You need specifics? Well, unfortunately we can’t tell you what those limitations are because it’d require a Super Secret SEC Decoder Ring. Put it this way – it’s impossible to make a new button in the Classic UI and a button in the New UI do the same thing. Why? Because we can’t write code when our fingers are in our ears and we’re singing, “LALALALALALALALALALALAAAAAAAAaaaaa…”.
“To be honest there are a lot fewer requests for the old UI than discussions here would indicate, but the rationale is well understood to better support a transition.”
Interpretation:
When I said, “To be honest”, you instinctively trusted me. Subtle, no? Anyway – in spite of all your experience there’s not really that many of you. You’re just making disproportionally more noise. Here’s the deal: we need to get Revit out to the masses. But the masses have short attention spans. They love shiny. And big. And YouTube. So we need a UI that is more shiny, big and distracting than YouTube. Otherwise the masses won’t get any work done or pay their subscription notices on time. Yes – we do happen to manage multiple UI strategies for some other products. But those products have competitors in the marketplace with really passionate users. And if you think Revit users are cult-like, you can’t begin to imagine what SolidWorks users are like. Put it this way: Revit users are like mid-western-Lutherans compared to a bunch of end-of-an-Appalachian-dirt-road-rattlesnake-handling-poison-drinking-tongue-speaking-Pentecostals. So we really don’t want to upset the Inventor users. And since Revit really doesn’t have a meaningful competitor we can pretty much serve dinner and you pretty much have to eat it (or go to bed hungry). Hey – someone get that dang SEC guy outta here!
“Biggest issue here is that we would have to support both the new and old UI at the same time which is roughly twice as much work or half as many new enhancements. Pretty much why it was deprecated in the first place.”
Interpretation:
Twice as much work! Do you have any idea how much time was spent supporting the old UI? Infinity! So if we have to support two UIs we’ll have to do Infinity^2 more work! Do you have any idea how hard that is?! Anyway, it’s now obvious you don’t understand how this game gets played. If you keep pestering us for the old UI, then we’ll threaten to extract a price. How much? Well, let’s put it this way: by having to manage two UIs, we’ll insinuate that we’ll only be able to get to around half of all the cool toys we’ve been begging everyone to let us do. So just to clarify – you’ll eventually get all the cool toys…but it’ll take twice as long…minus Infinity^2. Basically somewhere below Site Tools. And we’ll be grumpy when we finally get around to it.
“Really just trying to deliver as many new enhancements as possible. We can’t go back in time so need to decide what the best path forward is.
Interpretation:
Managing two UI’s is impossible for the Revit team because to do so actually requires time travel. Yes – in fact we already do happen have one time machine. But obviously it’s already being used by the AutoCAD team for managing their two UIs. And so far they’ll only share it with the Inventor team.
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