...wicked snip ... Adding a feature that literally "takes away" features is kind of weird unless you're new and want all the stuff you don't understand hidden...
 
Screensets can be helpful but with the dock, inspector, and browser so easily brought up and hidden there's not as much need for it. I remember SAW+ way back in the day, which was far more window driven, and the had a simply elegant system for view mgmt using the F keys. It was sublime. 

All of this is new to me.  Hopefully Cakewalk by BandLab will be new to a bunch of users.  My frame of reference is Music Creator.  I've used MC2, 3, 4 and 6.  Graduating to Cakewalk by BandLab is sort of like powering a rollerskate with a V8 engine.

When I worked at Microsoft the guys in the Office team determined that most of the requested new features were already in the application, users just couldn't find them. So they undertook a wholesale reworking of the UI to make the bazillion application functions more "discoverable" while at the same time reducing the clutter that came from trying to make everything visible.
 
I see lenses as Sonar's solution to that problem. It gives you the ability to create highly focused, simplified views of the application based on what you need at any given point in your workflow. You may not need lenses, but I suspect that people who do need them need them badly.

stickman393
... badly implemented feature (screensets)...

 
What don't you like about Screensets?

I find screensets very useful.
I've never tried lenses though.

kevinwal
When I worked at Microsoft the guys in the Office team determined that most of the requested new features were already in the application, users just couldn't find them. So they undertook a wholesale reworking of the UI to make the bazillion application functions more "discoverable" while at the same time reducing the clutter that came from trying to make everything visible.
 
I see lenses as Sonar's solution to that problem. It gives you the ability to create highly focused, simplified views of the application based on what you need at any given point in your workflow. You may not need lenses, but I suspect that people who do need them need them badly.

You got it. Lenses lay the groundwork for "adaptive UI" where the user interface is driven by workflow. In the future we might enhance it even further to make it more intelligent and adaptive but today you can do that by making presets for your different workflows. You can make a preset for a very streamlined UI that is only tracking focused or one that is mixing centric with no edit operations or views.
 
When we released the first version of CbB we discussed shipping with a lens that was very streamlined rather than showing the whole UI. However we decided against it since it might have been confusing to some users who thought they were not getting the whole program or that it was "dumbed down" :)