If you're a button, you have one job: to transmit Morse code from the finger to the machine, Morse code representing a complicated POSIX shell command. And also to power down this entire one-button terminal with a 3 second press, power it up on any button press, with a firmware reset if powered up by a 30 second press.

▲ Joker_vD 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Now I am imagining a typewriter with just two huge round buttons, next to each other horizontally, and a spacebar bellow them:

     *-----*      *-----*
    |       |    |       |
    |   ●   |    |   Ω   |
    |       |    |       |
     *-----*      *-----*
     
      [================]

A press of each round button rotates the typing ball accordingly, pressing the space prints the chosen letter and resets the ball to the neutral state. This whole thing should probably be electric lest you'd have to press the space bar by smashing it with both fists.

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kevindamm 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Now remove the spacebar, combine the two buttons into a single one for "tone" and adapt it to morse code. All the buttons still do only one thing and now there's only one button!

And, you don't have to worry about what to do in the case that someone hits the "rotate ball" button while it's still rotating.

	▲	Joker_vD 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> And, you don't have to worry about what to do in the case that someone hits the "rotate ball" button while it's still rotating. Eh, it's a pretty trivial problem, comptometers have it figured out more than a hundred years ago.

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bitwize an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple still did it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

▲ Gualdrapo 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The power button of my pc also has the job to tell wether the PC is turned on. So do bulb switch buttons that have a pilot light, and so on

	▲	3 hours ago \| parent [-]
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