---
title: "Moving from a green screen is hard"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/11/moving-from-a-green-screen-is-hard.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/11/moving-from-a-green-screen-is-hard.html"
published: "2004-06-11T04:47:00"
updated: "2004-06-11T04:47:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "James points to a discussion of the hard transition Data Entry folk do when moving from a “Green Screen” application onto a GUI based app (web/win). I totally agree. The issue actually dawned on me a couple of weeks…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Moving from a green screen is hard

By Roy Osherove June 11, 2004 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 11, 2004; technical details may be outdated.

James points to a [discussion of the hard transition Data Entry folk do](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3264158589) when moving from a “Green Screen” application onto a GUI based app (web/win).

I totally agree. The issue actually dawned on me a couple of weeks ago. I was talking to a friend who works at aviation. In one of our chats he complained that “Now they're making us move to a whole GUI based system. I don't see what was wrong with the old one! I could enter data at the speed of though. Now I'll have to use the **mouse**!”

He's totally right. It would be much slower for someone who memorizes beeps and keystrokes to move to a web based interface. The experience **can** be encapsulated into a new GUI windows app, but it would still be hard for the app devs to create an app that mimics the old one as accurately as desired for people not to have growing pains.

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Jun 13, 2004

    ### [Convincing Management to buy books](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/13/convincing-management-to-buy-books.html)

- Jun 12, 2004

    ### [\[ot\] Piano is love](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/12/ot-piano-is-love.html)

- Jun 9, 2004

    ### [A GMail alternative, today](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/9/a-gmail-alternative-today.html)

- Jun 8, 2004

    ### ["Pen And Paper" interviews](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/8/quotpen-and-paperquot-interviews.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/