...because I happened to come across it in my bookmarks just now, there's an article by Don Norman [1] that made the HN frontpage somewhat recently [2] sharing my pessimistic view about usability today. Admittedly, he has a conflict of interest, making money by telling people how bad their UIs are and how to make them better. But he definitely is very respected, and, in my opinion, deservedly so.

> [...] strong "kids today" vibes. [...] entire industry has forgotten how to do our jobs.

The OP seemed to be pessimistic, your initial point was "It was pretty bad in the mid-90s, and it's no worse today" which is really not very optimistic either, and my point was "Well, it was bad in the mid-90s, then got better, then got worse again". So, FWIW, I think that my point was actually somewhat more nuanced than the pessimistic context. I was also expressing optimism towards certain technologies while expressing pessimism towards others.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90338379/i-wrote-the-book-on-use...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37902412