People aren't talking about AutoCAD, but things such as Autodesk Inventor, AD Fusion 360, ...

The reason being that Open Source is a bunch of people who approach EVERYTHING as a programming problem, and they are chronically allergic to graphics, graphical UIs, and any kind of sense of what user interactions are a good experience.

They don't start with "how do users want this to operate?" They start with a weekend of coding, applying their preconceived notions, a library of fancy algorithms that are not directly motivated by an actual feature, and they go from there. This does not lead to a good product, as in something that could earn you money on an open market. It only prevails, in spite of nobody wanting to pay for it, because they give it away for free, and they sink their own "disposable time" (and maybe even income) into the project.

Autodesk should have started their own ECAD from scratch. They have mountains of CAD know-how in house. Their acquisition of EAGLE did nobody any favors.

I am not sad to see it go. The only ones I know of who used to use EAGLE were those who got hooked on it when it was either free or the cheapest option for hobbyists and small businesses. It didn't win any UI/UX competitions, certainly not against the joy that is modern programs for solid CAD.

The history of FreeCAD proves that UI/UX is the hard part.

I am not trained to be a mechanical engineer. I wanted to explore 3D printing. The usual suspects (FOSS missionaries with a deep-rooted hotly burning hate for capitalism) gave me OpenSCAD, which was okay to dick around with but QUICKLY showed its clunkiness ("compiling"... what a joke). So then I gave FreeCAD a look, because everyone said it's just like the commerical programs. It was not. Documentation and tutorials were a mess. The program itself was a mess. UX that makes you want to strangle someone.

So then I looked for free student versions of commercial software. They had a clear UI and UX, clear tutorials. It was a joy to model the parts I needed.

If I needed 3D modeling for engineering in the future, I would absolutely pay for a commercial program. FreeCAD was simply no competition. I don't know if it is now. Nor do I have any motivation whatsoever to even bother to give it another look.

If I need a license for hobbyist purposes, I'm sure some of the commercial offerings are happy to give me one for free because that would translate into commerce for them if I ever needed it professionally.

Age has an effect, no matter if it's software or electronics. These types learned their trade once, some decades ago, and keep driving like that.

If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them. No company has the money to spend nor the inclination to even suggest education to their workers. Companies usually consider that a waste of time and money. I don't know why. Probably because "investing" in your work force is considered stupid because they'll fire you the moment a quarterly earnings call looks less than stellar.

> If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them

These guys are epitome of arrogance. I have been doing this for N years, you have nothing to teach me! Then the same guy will be staring for several hours straight on a prototype board which is hard shorted because he accidentally created a junction in his schematic. ERC (electrical rules checker) would catch it, if guy would bother to run it...

> If you want old dogs to learn new tricks, teach them.

That's not really how our industry works - or even how it should work IMO.

If old dogs want to keep their jobs they should teach themselves new tricks.

Where I studied, they reduced that, at least the workload and class time, in favor of more math and informatics.

Definitely no ALU design on the curriculum, no interfacing or busses, very little physics. They don't even put a multimeter in your hand.

Informatics is considered a branch of logic. If you want to know how to design a computer, you should have studied EE, is their thinking.

Someone with a physics background might be better prepared for the analog world than someone with a digital background.

I wouldn't even rate this "pasta". It's word salad, no carbs, no proteins.

Right?

You! Of all people! I mean I am off the hook for your food, healthcare, shelter given lack of meaningful social safety net. You'll live and die without most people noticing. Why care about living up to your grasp literacy?

Online prose is the least of your real concerns which makes it bizarre and incredibly out of touch how much attention you put into it.

Forgot you switched accounts my dude?

I asked Gemini 3 flash/fast. It didn't fall for the trap.

When I revealed this to be a meme doing the rounds on the internet, it admitted knowledge of this:

> The "Car Wash Test" has actually become a bit of a viral sensation in early 2026 for exactly the reasons you mentioned

So yes, either it's somehow getting finetuned frequently, or else Google engineers tweaked its response to this specific prompt/situation so it wouldn't fall into the trap.