In the early 1980s, I got a job at Western Union (the old telecom company, not the thing it became). I was programming special reports in 4GL languages like RAMIS and MARK IV plus a little COBOL, and I was asked at one point to see if I could find a use for the Xerox Star, a descendant of the Alto. It was the first time I had ever heard of a mouse, and I had never seen a real GUI before. The system was very cool, but my experience was that it was best used as a word processor and typesetting machine. It had a programming environment, but I did have a language manual and was never able to write any programs for it.

I loved the machine, and even wrote part of a short story using the word processor. They moved it to corporate headquarters after two weeks, so I did not get very far with it, but I remember loving the experience. Windows was a poor substitute to the feel of the Star interface.