I’ve always figured my own income tax. A long time ago when I had a circle of friends, I often figured taxes for friends because I enjoyed the work. Now I hate it.
Why did I enjoy it then and hate it now? Easy.
Paper vs computer.
Even for a relatively simple situation, tax involves a lot of documents in different formats. Some are TXT, some have to be screencapped as JPGs because the source won’t let you have real text for fake “security” reasons, some are PDFs. Among the PDFs, some IRS forms (eg the SS worksheet P915) are uneditable while the main forms are editable. Those uneditable forms have to be turned into TXT to fill in the answers.
All of the action is inside the computer, which only displays one page at a time. You can’t examine several pages at once without switching tabs, often closing or altering one of the documents if you’re not careful. When you need to copy a number from line 34 of one form to line 17c of another form, you have to Ctrl-C, change tabs, Ctrl-V. Sometimes the receiving document refuses to accept a copy for unknown reasons, so you have to type it in. Windows 11 makes things tremendously worse with slow responses, sticky mouse pointers, mysterious misdirections of files, and frequent intrusions inviting destruction by bug-packages called “updates”.
The old way with paper was far more graceful. You could spread out all the necessary pages on a table in an organized way. You could look at two or three of them together without closing or losing any of them. You could line up the sending document and receiving document and copy several things at once.
To make it worse, the calculator is ALSO in the computer, so you have to open its tab, sometimes copy or sometimes type in the numbers, shift for plus and times, and carefully make sure the result is right without seeing the whole process.
The middle path in the 1970s and 80s, paper with a separate calculator or adding machine, was the best setup. I wrote about this middle path 12 years ago.
Less’s Law turned out to be remarkably predictive for later versions of Windows and AI.
Every new version slows down by AT LEAST a factor of 2, usually more like 10.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Supposedly computing speed continues to increase. Nonsense. In terms of actual time from keyboard stroke to results, computing speed slows down by a factor of 2 for every new generation of computers.
I’ve got a reasonably up-to-date desktop. Dual core, 64-bit, 3GHz processor. This is NOMINALLY 1000 times faster than the original Radio Shack PC I used 30 years ago. In FACT the new computer is about 1000 times slower for most basic operations.
When I hit Ctrl-O to open a file, I can see the steps happening.
Computer says: “Hmm. User has depressed CTRL. Let me ring up Bill and see what this means. Hello, Mr Gates? User has depressed CTRL. Oh, okay. This means that the next key belongs to the CTRL series as opposed to the Shift or normal series. Thanks, Mr Gates. Bye-bye. Now User has depressed an O. Hello, Mr Gates? Now User has depressed an O simultaneous with the CTRL. What does … Oh, you say this Allows User To Open A File? Okay. Bye-bye. Open a file… open a file… this implies that I need to find the currently active folder… Oops, the file drawer was a little tight. Need to oil that drawer. Where’s the WD40? There. Spritz, spritz, spritz. Much better. File drawer is open. Now I need to build one of those tiresome Window things on User’s screen. Here’s a frame: top side … left side … right side … bottom side. Now here’s a blank area in the middle of the frame. Add a couple of buttons on the bottom. One button, two buttons. We need labels on the buttons. Open on the first one, then…. I guess Cancel on the second one. Does that look right? I suppose. Now I need to fill in some files. Whoopsie! We seem to have some folders here along with files. What do I do with folders? Hello, Mr Gates? Okay. Bye-bye. Find some folder icons for the folders. First one, second one. Now I have, let’s see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Did I count right? Try again. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six files to list. First one. It seems to need an icon. What kind of icon? Hello, Mr…”
Well, you get the idea. On my old 1984 Tandy PC all of these activities happened in a few milliseconds. Instantly to my eyes. There was no possible way I could separate the steps. On my 2010 Dell, supposedly 1000 times faster, I can see each of these operations and I can count TEN FUCKING SECONDS while they all ever-so-slowly complete. After several file operations the computer seems to improve with practice, and the time slips down to one or two seconds. But if I do something else for a while, the training is lost and the computer has to ask Mr Gates how to respond to a keystroke all over again.
In terms of total keystroke to action time, THIS IS SLOWER THAN A MECHANICAL ADDING MACHINE.
Or an even closer analogy: FINDING A DIGITAL FILE ON THIS SO-CALLED COMPUTER IS SLOWER THAN FINDING AN ACTUAL FUCKING PAPER FILE IN AN ACTUAL FUCKING METAL FILING CABINET.
The problem is not at the OS level. My old courseware, which uses DOS-level directory functions to build its own directory listbox, runs just as fast in W7 as in earlier Win versions. Also, some Norton-Commander type directory systems run instantly. The problem is in Explorer, and in all progs that use the top-level file dialogs…. which is ALL major progs. Many forums have discussed this giant bug, but none have offered a solution that works. I’ve tried them all.
Polistra's Mill 