The older my dad gets, the harder he is to please when it comes to computer software. He wants to back up his video files to an FTP server I have and refuses to be happy with anything that doesn't resemble a Windows Explorer or Finder folder that he can drag and drop files into. Everything I have found has various show stopper flaws: confusing user interface, intermittent error dialogues, Unicode bugs. He essentially wants Softworks Fetch for Windows and it simply doesn't exist.
2) The best I've been able to offer him is FileZilla. In my opinion, this is a fine FTP client. In his opinion, it's confusing. Too many panels with too many things going on, he says, and why does it need a local file browser at all when he can just use Windows Explorer for that. The complaints never end. This has become a common theme with just about anything I try to set up on his computer these days. If he has to learn anything at all, he'll forget it very soon, he says.
@thor There's plenty of old engineers who do just fine; many end up doing maintenance on languages that had been stable for decades like COBOL or FORTRAN, but there's more who just keep coding in current tools till they retire or SIGTERM.
But you won't find a lot of PR-heavy Silicon Valley companies promoting them, because SV preys on young, stupid kids and throws them out when they reach adulthood.
3) I wonder how long it'll be until I'm the one who balks at unfamiliar software because I have to learn a few basics before I can use it, and that won't do, because I'm too old to remember things anymore.
What is it like to be a really old computer expert? As far as I can tell, you just begin to lose your touch after a certain age, because things have changed too much.