Amir E. Aharoni

Every couple of years I run into people with whom I have to discuss not just radio buttons, but the TERM "radio buttons" because I have to explain someone how to translate a @wikipedia user interface string or to report a bug. Yes, even people who read bug reports don't quite understand the term, and I don't blame them of course.

Like, why, why the fuck do we have a thing called "radio buttons" in the 2020s.

And sure, modern frontend technologies like HTML and Android use the term "radio button", too, but those 1990s books about Turbo Vision actually bothered to explain WHY are they called "radio buttons": Because American cars tend to have buttons to choose the stations and when one button is pressed, the others pop.

Modern car enterntainment systems don't use those buttons, but the term survives in frontend programming.

If you ever needed a demostration that the fediverse doesn't represent the general population, here's one.

The only reason I know the term "radio button" is that
in the 1990s,
I read two books
about
Turbo Vision
and wrote a lot of code in
Turbo Pascal
with the knowledge I gained.

I know what "radio button" in software means without having to look it up anywhere.