Our current machine is 9 years old, bought because we were moving in to a new house and putting in a new kitchen. MrsH wanted a nice neat fitted one behind a matching wooden door rather than our standalone one. That was probably 15 years old, so I wasn't too upset to leave it at the old house.
Telling it what program to run involves spinning a dial to choose, then pressing the "Play" triangle button. However, the programming dial has "helpful" Euro-style pictograms to indicate what each does, with no words or numbers to give a clue. And those pictograms are totally different to the ones on clothes care labels. So, for the odd occasion I do the washing, I know to put the dial to 2 o'clock, and press play. Not got a clue what any of the other 20 or so settings do, and I'm reasonably convinced MrsH doesn't either.
Extremely rarely, we need to do something unusual in there, so have to dig out the manual to decipher the "helpful" pictures.
Our clothes seem to come out clean, not trashed, and smelling OK, so that's good enough.