Comment by Scoundreller

> It turns out that if you never change the UI and every menu item always has the same hotkey, navigating the software becomes muscle memory and your speed is only limited by how fast you can physically push the buttons.

Oh, I’ve been a new hire at places like this.

The day1 stuff in the system will be logically or coherently placed (e.g. alphabetically) and then the rest will be incrementally added on top.

The menu options will go like this:

1. Alpha

2. Bravo

3. Charlie

4. Turbo-Bravo

5. Charlie-Undo

6. AAAlpha

Great for day1 users that are still there and started with just 3 options but new users are screwed. The arrangement started to stop making sense circa 1995.

I’ve seen the same thing where parts shelves were sorted by manufacturer (to make re-ordering by manufacturer simple).

When they moved to automatic inventory, shelves didn’t matter anymore and if a part was made by manu1 but now manu2, they’d keep putting it with manu1 because “that’s where everyone’s gone to look for it for the part 20 years”.

All you had to know was who made that part in 2003 when auto-inventory stopped forcing them to be consistent by manufacturer to know which shelf to pick from. Easy!

New hires get screwed and over time nothing makes sense anymore.