July 28th, 2003

Why doesn't Windows have an "expert mode"?

We often get requests like this:

There should be a slider bar somewhere, say on the Performance Tab, that ranges from Novice to Advanced. At the highest level, all the geek settings are turned on. At the Novice level, all the settings for beginners are turned on. In between, we can gradually enable stuff.

We’ve been trying to do something like this since even before Windows 95, and it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work because somebody who is a whiz at Excel will rate themselves as Advanced even though they can’t tell a CPU from a box of Cracker Jacks.

They’re not stupid. They really are advanced users. Just not advanced at the skill we’re asking them about.

And before you go mocking the non-geeks: Even geeks don’t know everything. I know a lot about GUI programming, but I only know a little about disk partitioning, and I don’t know squat about Active Directory. So am I an expert?

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Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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