The Beauty of Finished Software (josem.co) 174
Programmer and writer Jose Gilgado, writes about WordStar 4.0, a popular word processor from the early 80s that continues to work reliably well. Famously author George R.R. Martin used the application to write "A Song of Ice and Fire." "It does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type up a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want a capital, if I'd wanted a capital, I would have typed the capital," R.R. Martin said earlier, as we previously covered.
Gilgado argues that WordStar 4.0 embodies the concept of finished software -- a software you can use forever with no unneeded changes. He adds: Sometimes, a software upgrade is a step backward: less usable, less stable, with new bugs. Even if it's genuinely better, there's the learning curve. You were efficient with the old version, but now your most used button is on the other side of the screen under a hidden menu. In a world where constant change is the norm, finished software provides a breath of fresh air. It's a reminder that reliability, consistency, and user satisfaction can coexist in the realm of software development. So the next time you find yourself yearning for the latest update, remember that sometimes, the best software is the one that doesn't change at all.
Gilgado argues that WordStar 4.0 embodies the concept of finished software -- a software you can use forever with no unneeded changes. He adds: Sometimes, a software upgrade is a step backward: less usable, less stable, with new bugs. Even if it's genuinely better, there's the learning curve. You were efficient with the old version, but now your most used button is on the other side of the screen under a hidden menu. In a world where constant change is the norm, finished software provides a breath of fresh air. It's a reminder that reliability, consistency, and user satisfaction can coexist in the realm of software development. So the next time you find yourself yearning for the latest update, remember that sometimes, the best software is the one that doesn't change at all.
Generally agree. (Score:2)
I use iA Writer on my Mac and have used the same version for several years. No subscription, optional updates.
Re:Generally agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing to remember about that is that WordStar is old enough that if you don't want to install an update, well, you just don't. You have to specifically choose to update rather than having the choice made for you - much like the example of whether you want a lowercase or capital letter. With more modern software you have to jump through hoops to make sure you don't accidentally upgrade to the next version, and that's if such a choice even exists without airgapping your machine from the internet for the rest of its life.
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Because although the reason for the double-spacing doesn't equally apply in modern computing, default font kerning is not always as readable for sentence boundaries. Especially when skimming. I typed this whole comment with double spacing between sentences, but HTML collapses all consecutive whitespace into a single space character.
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Why? Because it looks better. Besides, when I learned to type (in 1976) with a real "manual" (meaning not electric) typewriter, the standard practice was to append to a period at the end of a sentence two spaces. It looked better than and it still looks better now.
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Mandatory upgrades exist because of the internet. If you can download a document, the app that opens it can be exploited, so you need to keep it up to date... It at least be aware of any potential security issues.
I bet if you look there are ways to exploit WordStar.
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exploits existed before internet.
Re: Generally agree. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but before the internet, airgap security was the norm. The internet changed the entire security paradigm.
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Of course they did. But they were several orders of magnitude harder to actually execute.
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I bet at this point you're unlikely to get a malicious WordStar file as an email attachment. So there's that.
But if you're a really high profile target whose software preferences are known they probably still wouldn't download your email attachment.
Re: Generally agree. (Score:2)
Re:Generally agree. (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Mandatory upgrades exist because of the internet. If you can download a document, the app that opens it can be exploited,"
And that was mostly because of the "feature" added to do scripting and other crap in documents and then cloud crap. Before that, I doubt it was a problem. Kinda reinforces the point about finished software- they added scripting (a feature I found useless) and that is what started the problems :)
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Document formats are almost just as exploitable without executable code. At least if it's run in a system before modern DEP and ASLR protections were in place. Or using older software that has creative coding techniques that would require those to be disabled. All you need is a specially crafted document that will create a buffer overflow in the parser and you've got control of that user.
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There's quite a difference between security updates and what the article is talking about, don't you think?
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Mandatory upgrades exist because of the internet. If you can download a document, the app that opens it can be exploited, so you need to keep it up to date... It at least be aware of any potential security issues.
I bet if you look there are ways to exploit WordStar.
And it is working so well. /s
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Mandatory upgrades exist because of the internet. ...
No. Mandatory upgrades exist because recurring revenue, and if you aren't milking your customers on a recurring basis at an ever-increasing rate ...forever, you're businessing wrong.
PATCHES, existed before the internet and are more important than ever because of it. Unfortunately, as your comment demonstrates, most of us have been manipulated into conflating the value they once provided with the pay-forever subscription model that entails on-screen controls moving every couple months and pop-up pestering i
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The thing to remember about that is that WordStar is old enough that if you don't want to install an update, well, you just don't. You have to specifically choose to update rather than having the choice made for you - much like the example of whether you want a lowercase or capital letter. With more modern software you have to jump through hoops to make sure you don't accidentally upgrade to the next version, and that's if such a choice even exists without airgapping your machine from the internet for the rest of its life.
I remember WordStar fondly. We used the DOS version and later Windows and it allowed you to focus on what you were writing with minimal interference. One feature I liked was the ability to delete an entire column of text; very useful when you imported files that had numbering and tabs infant of each line. You simply deleted everything at once, no "Find and replace" nonsense or going line by line.
Re: Generally agree. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Generally agree. (Score:2)
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grinding it into shape.
I really like that metaphor. So appropriate!
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Point well made, though
idk, the point against feature creep or change just for the sake of attention or to avoid irrelevance is indeed valid, but the whole concept of "finished software" as a counterpoint is artificial and really unrelated. such thing can't even exist, ultimately every piece of software will eventually outilve the hardware it was written for, and will have to adapt or become literally a rosetta stone to never run again. what is "finished" supposed to mean, anyway, specially since wordstar is presented as a model
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Wordstar web site (Score:2, Informative)
Is http://www.wordstar.org/ [wordstar.org]
Not official, just a community site (Score:4, Informative)
That is just a WordStar users' community. It isn't official in any way. It doesn't give you any way of obtaining WordStar, just recommending that you buy a copy on eBay. It also discusses the DOS and Windows versions exclusively, completely ignoring the heyday of WordStar for CP/M.
Re:Not official, just a community site (Score:4, Informative)
That is just a WordStar users' community. It isn't official in any way. It doesn't give you any way of obtaining WordStar, just recommending that you buy a copy on eBay. It also discusses the DOS and Windows versions exclusively, completely ignoring the heyday of WordStar for CP/M.
You can find it at WinWorldPC [winworldpc.com], probably the best site for abandonware and software too old for companies to care about enforcing copyright. If it was popular back in the day, there's a good chance it's there. There's a huge library of old OS images too, for you people that like to go time traveling in VirtualBox.
Also in MAME software sets (Score:2)
You can also find numerous versions of WordStar for CP/M computers in MAME software list media sets. You can find these on archive.org and there are also regularly updated torrents. MAME emulates lots of Z80-based machines that run CP/M-80.
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Capitals (Score:2)
I hate some of these modern systems where you type up a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want a capital, if I'd wanted a capital, I would have typed the capital," R.R. Martin said
e. e. Cummings would have concurred.
Microsoft wins (Score:3)
As much as Microsoft shits on its network managers and now, its O.S., its signature office suit has remained consistent over the last 16 - 19 years. While the toolbar "ribbon" invoked that "learning curve" pointlessly (The point was, the next generation of office drones didn't need to learn the MS Office menu architecture.), it didn't ruin old data. Things like the Ribbon and auto-correct and Clippy, could be disabled by power-users. How much software allows those choices nowadays?
This year, GnuCash added an auto-correct, that cannot be disabled, to its auto-complete function (if you change the current entry, it automatically restores the old data): It is the dumbest thing ever. One has to push a 'cancel' button to save the data that was just typed into the software.
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Interesting that you mentioned 19 years. I buy a new computer every 3-5 years and each time I pull out my Office 2003 CDs and install them again. I run my consulting business with Excel and Access and these versions do everything I need. I have learned to use the newer versions but I am much faster with the legacy versions. For drafting correspondence and blog posts I prefer WordPad.
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Amen. I was a serious, array-formula-snob, loved-my-little-macros, Excel maven, the office guru, and I can't recall anything in 2007 that really made Excel better than 2003, and after 2007 it was all downhill. (Particularly the switch from MDI to SDI with 2010 screwed all my .XLA add-on macro dialogues, no way around it, tell me that's "backwards compatible".)
There was just nuthin' that was likely to come up in business-management, most science work, engineering work, medical work, that Excel 2003 couldn
Re:Microsoft wins - no it does not (Score:3)
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If the typos are consistent... there's always 'Find' followed by 'Replace All', especially with the 'match case' option checked.
Auto-correct features drive me up the wall, as does predictive typing. I have to use them on my phone to compensate for the inadequacies of a screen touch interface without tactile feedback - but only because it's 'less bad' not 'better'. I miss the Blackberry full keyboard and optical track pad from their later devices. Sure, you lost 1/3 to 1/2 your screen real estate, but the
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I didn't catch on immediately, so had to go back and remove a number of spurious "helpful additions" the editor inserted for me. Oh yeah and (not completely in the same category), when I would add something like a "while (conditio
When is software "done"? (Score:3)
It can be argued that sometimes software is officially "done", and really doesn't need to be updated, unless there is something really freaky with security. For example, uuencode is something that can stick around effectively forever without an upgrade.
There are some word processors which are also relatively timeless. If one doesn't want the latest and greatest (ironically, have there been any killer new features in basic office apps in the past decade?), Word 3.0, System 5/6, on a Mac Plus is considered as a benchmark for a responsive platform for writing stuff. WordPerfect for DOS is considered extremely good as well.
These days, I don't think most software can ever be considered "finished", where the program will never get an update... but it doesn't matter. As time goes by, operating systems change, say from 32 to 64 bit, architectures change, where computing is moving from x86/AMD64 to ARM, RISC-V, and even x86S, an executable would always need something done, if only a recompile, maybe some tweaking to work well with the new architecture. Of course, security issues affect virtually everything, so it is hard to say a program is "done", especially if it uses libraries that are potentially insecure and is vulnerable to supply chain attacks. At best a program can be neglected for a few years, but anything longer than that, it may not be usable, unless it is tossed in some emulator or VM.
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Hell, yes. If I could, I'd be using WordPerfect 6.0c (for DOS, that I own) now. I *think* the only feature I'd need to add would be "accept/reject changes" from someone else, and comments.
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I thought you could just slap MS Copilot on it, make sure all your GitHub commits are signed, and call it a day? (/s of course) At least I think that is what the AI guys want to call it.
Digressing, this makes me wonder if AI can maintain software. For example, a security issue hits, the code can be searched and stuff like a "strcmp()" from the TTY be replaced by something more secure and less vulnerable to buffer overflows.
I agree absolutely (Score:2)
*cough* Slack *cough*
Re: I agree absolutely (Score:2)
Slack was finished just before the first line of code was written. That's where they should have stopped.
I still use Joe's Own Editor (Score:4, Interesting)
Having learned WordStar syntax with Borland Turbo-Pascal around 1985, I sill prefer using use Joe's Own Editor for sysadmin tasks:
https://joe-editor.sourceforge... [sourceforge.io]
I install it on any host I can giving the context otherwise, I simply use vi. Joe is available is most distros and is not well known as far as I can tell.
e.g., on debian:
apt install joe
Finally, joe makes backup files with the silly ~ or something like that by default which I hate. So, I just create a bash script when I can make it available system wide or make an alias invoking joe. Of course, I am sure the customization might very well be accomplished by editing .joerc as well.
#!/bin/sh
joe -asis -nobackups -lightoff -pg 0 -autoindent $*
Perfect for my use case! I have been using it since ~1993 on Linux!
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Wow! I dug a little more into joe's editor and it even got its own Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Many thanks to Joseph Allen!
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I used Joe regularly, from way back in 1996, precisely because it used man WordStar key combinations. ed and vim, for instance, gave me little payback to learn another editor just for a few text config files. WordPerfect had no good port, just as well.
I finally gave in and now use nano, it's ubiquitous and I prefer to keep my Linux installs simple, there are too many.
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Problem I always have using nano instead of joe is that ctrl-K+X saves and exits in joe, but ctrl-K deletes your current line in nano.
I don't know how many times I've said "oops... exit, no save..." and started over on my changes due to this
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Yup. You learn the new thing or you bang your head on your palm.
Re:I still use Joe's Own Editor (Score:4, Insightful)
I like nano. It's simple, yet it has all the features I need and little else. It's fast, clean, and it just works for me.
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Same here. I can use Emacs and a bit of vi, but joe is what makes me most efficient.
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Interesting! I’ve been using Linux/FreeBSD since the mid-90s and I’d never heard of joe. Pretty well locked into vi/vim at this point. Looks like an interesting editor.
Agreed (Score:5, Informative)
I have a vague recollection of using WordStar (not sure which version) back when I first started working. From there I migrated to WordPerfect 5.1 which IMO is the most perfect piece of word processing software ever. The speed with which you could get things done is unrivaled to this day. More importantly, you could see what was going on behind the scenes.
If your paragraphs weren't lining up correctly even though you used the built-in commands, you could use reveal codes to see where those commands were and manually manipulate them to get the desired result. If something wasn't highligting or bolding, or you didn't want them highlighted or bolded but they still were after turning things off, reveal codes to the rescue. The use of reveal codes was the most important feature of WordPerfect, something no other program has to this day.
The program was lean and fast. No cruft or unnecessary nonsense to deal with. It did one thing and it did it fantastically, the complete opposite of most software today.
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I played with WordStar some back in the way-back day on TRS-80's and such. But WordPerfect was what came along and blew it away. So I very much agree. And it ran on Unix/Xenix/Linux.... both the text and GUI versions. Used it as long as I could, all the way through 2013 or so before it became almost impossible to get the ancient binaries to run anymore :( Then we were forced into OpenOffice paradigm, which is similar to the MS-Office design. For word processing, WordPerfect was still better, even now
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Re:Agreed (Score:4, Interesting)
The owners of WP were morons with a marketing department that couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag with the help of the Terminator.
Reveal codes was *the* killer app, and they were too stupid to see it. Every word processor produces *shit* for HTML, while WP's codes were 1:1 for HTML. And unlike all the rest, which put every single fucking code on every line (color, size, font, and more on everyline, instead of at the beginning of the usage and at the end...) that would have produced *clean* html
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Interesting)
WP's 'reveal codes' "feature" was a kludge to salvage something useful from a major flaw. WP allowed you to apply styling to random sections of text, but did not manage this very well. When you applied 3 style changes to a paragraph, you ended up with 3 start/end codes that may be saying the same thing, or may be conflicting with each other. WP did not take care of nesting these codes, or merging them. Worse, if you copy, move or delete part of your text, it would happily delete start or end codes, which would fuck up the styling for the rest of your document, and leave you trawling through thousands of formatting codes to find the missing one. Achieving consistent styling in WP was a monumental task.
Word was a major advance over WP because it properly managed formatting codes, so that you wouldn't have to do this manually any more.
The perfect wordprocessor was and remains Adobe FrameMaker, which makes it trivial to separate content and layout, allowing you to achieve consistent formatting with minimal effort.
Source: I once spent days cleaning up hundreds of formatting errors in a single 100-page WP document.
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>Word was a major advance over WP because it properly managed formatting codes, so that you wouldn't have to do this manually any more.
Right. Word *never* fucked up properly formatting stuff. Uh huh. I don't know what version of Word *you* were using but everyone else's wasn't like that at all. I guess if you drink the cool aid then it all was magikal...
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Word 5.0 for DOS was pretty ok.
Word for Windows was a little tricky to the point of not being usable. My favourite quirk was than Formulas only were displayed correctly after you used the formula editor once.
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Any formatting system should have a type of "reveal codes" capability, IMO. Of course, as I said, I like LaTeX, too, so there's that...
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Every secretary I know who knew both Dirt, er, Word and WordPerfect *hated* Word, and love WP.
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I'm not saying Word never fucks up, but it did eliminate one entire class of fuckups that WP allowed.
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Reveal codes is awesome. I wish that every type of formatting program came with it. Of course, I like LaTeX, too, as a markup and formatting system so there's that...
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>"Word was a major advance over WP because it properly managed formatting codes, so that you wouldn't have to do this manually any more."
I don't agree with this. I do agree there were times where it would not merge redundant codes (and that did seem like an oversight). But MS-Word *forced* the user to use only styles. WordPerfect had styles as well, but did not force the user into them, and even those would appear as visible codes that showed exactly when they took effect. Yes, forcing ONLY invisible
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Word, just like WP allows you to set random styling to any paragraph, it does not enforce the use of paragraph styles at all.
This is a bug IMO, as it makes it damn near impossible to get consistent formatting in either of these programs.
Word at least allows only one paragraph style per paragraph, so if you select a style it replaces the previous one, unlike WP which would happily stack styles on top of each other.
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Informative)
Worse, if you copy, move or delete part of your text, it would happily delete start or end codes, which would fuck up the styling for the rest of your document,
Yes, this 'feature' nearly gave me PTSD.
I remember hunting for the missing start/end codes; looking for them in a large document with overlapping codes would make you long for the sweet release of death.
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Though WP51 had an annoying bug when some erroneous character appeared, and then the bottom half of your document became inaccessible. Eventually I learned that you could save the document, open it up in Norton Utilities hex editor, and change the bad character back to a space. Caused some major headaches when writing school coursework against an impending deadline.
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The use of reveal codes was the most important feature of WordPerfect, something no other program has to this day.
I believe in the power of revealed underlying structure, but this assertion isn't quite right. There are many, many plug-ins, for example, to edit HTML that allow you to switch between HTML view and WSISYG.
The ultimate granddaddy of seeing underlying codes is TeX and it's derivatives like LaTeX. You don't get WSISYG without some 3rd party add-on, but, really, who needs them when you can write TeX properly so that the raw code approximates the finished document?
MS Word, which in addition to hiding formatti
They mean MS Word (Score:2)
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Even Word used to be "user-centered", ages ago. Microsoft Word 3.0 and 4.0 on a Mac SE/30, System 6 (System 7's multitasking was "meh") with 4 megs of RAM was pretty snappy, and could do a ton of cool things. You could even add every single option onto the menus if you so chose.
I guess times change. I respect WordStar, and I also miss VisiCalc because it did the job, no questions asked, and did stuff well. However, these days, I just don't bother, and use LibreOffice, Microsoft Word, or if editing text,
sometimes old is just fine (Score:2)
I write all my books on a 15 year old version of MS Word I standardize on. I loathe the modern versions and especially Office 365 and all its annoying intrusive gingerbread. Especially its political correctness feature in the Editor where it autocorrects your text to politically correct words.
Frankly I still hate the Ribbon and I prefer simple menus at the top. The dumbing down of interfaces and insertion of features for lazy or stupid people ticks me off. But then I prefer sports cars to lumbering SUVs, an
Languages embody this argument, too (Score:5, Insightful)
It's another reason why most mainstream languages suck. You can't install a new version of Python without it breaking half your code. Constantly changing versions of widely used libraries because "worse is better" and the developers couldn't be bothered to get the thing right the first time. Oddly enough, there are languages that try to avoid this. Common Lisp hasn't changed since the 1980's. Clojure avoid breaking changes like the plague. There are also languages outside the Lisp family that make stability a priority. My recommendation is that people who value their code avoid non-stable languages. It may be easier for lazy language developers who deliver half-assed features, but it makes life hell for people using the language.
Re:Languages embody this argument, too (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if this is still the case, but the last time I had to deal with software that used Java, it installed its own version. It turns out that other software that used Java, each installed their own version of Java. We had multiple versions of Java all running on the same box. That seems like a huge waste, but the only guaranty that anything that used Java would work was if they had their own version. So now I try to avoid anything that uses Java.
Word 5.0 for Mac (Score:2)
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Did any copies of 5.0 actually make it into the wild?
5.1 was the dominant strain that generally succeeded 4.0.
I kept both installed: they used the same format, except for some 5.1 extensions. ISTR that you could edit a 5.1 file with 4.0 without damaging it, as long as you didn't touch the blank areas (?) where 5.1 features were used.
I think it was inserted charts that I used that needed 5.1. I generally used 4.0 as it was snappier.
Word 5.1 and Excel 4.0 remain the last products out of Redmond worth purcha
Opinion (Score:2)
I agree with his point generally, Tools should let you use them as you want to use them.
That said, your average Joe User struggles mightily typing "successfully corrected recommended misspellings" (Ha, I got two of them right this time!) so there is some value in enabling spelling, grammar, and punctuation checking by default. (I will draw my sword to defend the Oxford comma, too.) If you are of the noble minority that wishes your text untouched by Clippy's helpful paperclip appendages, these features can
Modern minimalist writing-oriented alternatives (Score:2)
Want something that runs on modern OSes, has a minimalist interface, and is designed for writing? At least two programs come to mind:
Writemonkey (freemium, closed source, Windows only):
https://writemonkey.com/ [writemonkey.com]
FocusWriter (free, open source, Windows and Linux):
https://gottcode.org/focuswrit... [gottcode.org]
Sure, you could write in WordStar or other ancient DOS programs, but have fun printing unless you have an ancient printer, be stuck with 8.3 filenames, have to convert the files if you want to share them with others (a
MS Word peaked at Version 5 (Score:2)
The only really useful thing Microsoft added after Word 5 was change bars. Otherwise, Word 5 did what it needed to do, without all the bugs and complexity of subsequent updates.
People vote with their feet (Score:2, Interesting)
If people like WordStar and don't want change, they choose something like WordStar.
If people want a word processor that supports multi-user editing, inline comments, and *does* fix your capitalization, then they'll choose something like Word or Google Docs.
It's all OK, to each their own!
Windows will never get there (Score:3)
Whenever it even remotely approaches something like a finished state, MS pushes out a new turd and forces it on people, with no reason except greed. They and their crappy products have to die.
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Whenever it even remotely approaches something like a finished state, MS pushes out a new turd and forces it on people, with no reason except greed. They and their crappy products have to die.
It's a bigger problem than just Microsoft; any company whose income is derived from "selling software" has an incentive to keep offering new versions of that software (in order to continue receiving income), which means they have to keep finding new things to add/improve/change/fuck-up in order to convince people to keep sending the money.
That's the main reason why MS and so many other companies are trying to switch over to the "subscription model", so that their income stream isn't dependent on forever add
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Agreed. The Windows product cycle is a very obvious example though and the forced move to Win11 they are preparing is really insane for several reasons.
Quicken 2006 (Score:3)
I still manage my finances with Quicken 2006, now with 18 years of data. It is at least 3x as fast as the latest Quicken. Click from a checking account to a savings account, and Quicken 2006 switches instantaneously, while the latest Quicken takes 3 excruciating seconds.
Q2006 has a few bugs, but I know what they are and can work around them. For the latest market data, I hit the API from https://site.financialmodeling... [financialm...ngprep.com] and import the data as CSV files.
I'll probably never upgrade. (Anyway, the new Quicken can't import the old data reliably, according to the company.)
Other finished software (Score:3)
WordStar is indeed "finished software", but there are other kinds of similar software that are running everywhere. The software for many large banks run such code on their mainframes, programs written decades ago that no one dare change unless absolutely necessary for fear of what the consequences might be. The programs are stable and do what needs to be done quickly and maybe even efficiently. And because they were written for computers that were glacial when compared to today's zippy mainframes, these programs run like greased lightning by today's standards.
I haven't used WordStar in thirty-five years and that was on a 16 MHz 80386 running DRDOS but I remember it being very fast on that computer. Compare that to the LibreOffice I use today. Once I've got a document loaded, editing is very fast but there is so much about LibreOffice that is dead slow for reasons I've never been able to figure out. It appears to be doing both serious disk access and CPU crunching in order to simply load a document template. Why? Whatever happened to the simplicity of software? I think much of this comes from the fact that today's software engineers did not learn their trade on the slow computers of thirty or forty years ago, when writing tight code and using minimal RAM was absolutely necessary. Efficiency was the name of the game then. I don't think the engineers of today really know what that means.
In practice it's utopia (Score:3)
Re: Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Explain WHY software has to 'evolve'.
At least beyond the company with the copyright wanting to make more money.
There are many types of hammers and screw drivers, but these do not 'evolve' unless there is some gimmick to sell you another. If it breaks, you replace it WITH THE EXACT SAME THING, 40 years later.
Software can be done as well. It doesn't need to be ever changing.
As noted here, beyond the red squiggly line, word processor haven't done anything new in at least 25 years. They only look different and behave differently. Now they cater to empowering some moron to use some dumb font because now it's also got a bunch of desktop publishing features that are frivolous and used incorrectly by almost everyone that does it.
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Your mind is going to be blown when you realize that the existence of many types of hammers and screw drivers is, itself, an example of evolution. Not for gimmicks, but for purpose and fitness.
Phillips screwdrivers permit driving at an angle, not more torque. That is the purpose of a Posidriv bit, for an example, though Robertson bits (the one you should be using to install electrical wall outlets in the US) also provide positive drive and , well, you get the idea.
Hammers? Ball peen hammers are intended for
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But one hammer/screwdriver does not do all of those things. Dare I say "Do one thing and do it well"? :-)
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Well, then, the systemd of hammers would be a big box, many hammers, all wrapped up in one parcel. Unlike SYS5 or initd, you would have to claw through the box to find the one you need. Oh, wait... What did systemd solve again?
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Change is required for useful applications, (Score:2)
Explain WHY software has to 'evolve'.
At least beyond the company with the copyright wanting to make more money.
Some updates are pointless, but most apps are complex and require updates if underlying APIs change. A classic example was when Windows Vista came out and updated all the security protocols of Windows. What worked perfectly in Windows XP, no longer worked. Everyone in Javaland has been dealing with Java 9, where you could access libraries Sun warned you not to use (but provided no preferred alternative) until they cut off access. Anything that manipulates Java classes, like Spring, AOP, and Lombok has t
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Evolution is the right word for it I guess.
For every revolutionary feature like copy and paste, there are thousands of "mutations" that show up and are quickly eliminated as junk.
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Evolution is the right word for it I guess.
For every revolutionary feature like copy and paste, there are thousands of "mutations" that show up and are quickly eliminated as junk.
You're on the right track, but I'm not sure you've thought it completely through. Software once evolved before moving into the stage you describe. I'm nostalgic for even that. What we have now is more akin to being bombarded by gamma rays. Yeah, the evolution might still be happening, but most of the mutations are just cancer.
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Software didn't use to evolve. It used to be intelligently designed.
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Holy shit is your mind going to be blown when you discover that nail guns are highly automated hammers. And zombie killers.
Re: Nope (Score:2)
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Re: Nope (Score:5, Funny)
You like to think that software developers have research and data behind their UI changes?
Oh you sweet summer child how I adore your innocence.
Re: Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience, certain devs have a tendency to try to "refactor everything at every chance". And will introduce breaking API changes "it's difficult, but it's for the best" they justify. How changing one endpoint name "is for the best" is beyond me.
And don't get me started on the "new guy" that wants to change EVERYTHING. The client doesn't care how many lines of code you changed or how much nicer your architecture is this time around. They want a working system with bugs sorted out, not the latest version of this Javascript framework that came out 1 month ago and is on version 22.3 already (incompatible with 22.2)
Re: Nope (Score:5, Funny)
They've researched it and found that constant change ensures job security.
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Software must evolve. Same as people's needs and routines. I like to think (maybe it's not always the case) that if a button is moved it's because there was some research behind it and the users asked for it. Other than that, I think some people are just living in the past. Or they're the minority that the changes I mentioned don't apply to.
Here is our next systemd/wayland/websocket/etc. ingineer! Can't wait to see what is going to come out of it, that'll make some discussion subject for our next Christmas engineer party where I work!
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I partly agree.
There is a subset of users who like the software they have, and don't want or need any changes.
There is a larger subset of users who do need and want changes. Some recent useful changes in Word, for example, include the ability for multiple people to edit the same document, at the same time. This is very useful for collaboration. If you don't need that, maybe WordStar is just fine.
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Bullshit. In 1995, PC Mag had a review of word processors then available, and noted that 90% of uses used 10% of the facilities available *then*, and of the 10% that used any of the other 90% of the features, they only used them 10% of the time.
I'm writing *novels* (80k-120k words) and I know I'm not using 90% of the "features". MS adds them, otherwise, who'd buy a new copy?
Re:One point of view for one use case (Score:4, Interesting)
George R.R. Martin may be satisfied with the software, but that doesn't mean the design and style suits everyone.
Who is suggesting otherwise?
Actually with his main point he comes across as an old man yelling at clouds.
Pointless ad hominem.
The post comes across as entitled and ignorant. Entitled because "I have something that works for me and I won't even consider others."
There were no statements made about not considering other options. All humans are ignorant, anyone who believes they are an exception is exceptionally ignorant.
If he wants a word processor that just faithfully types what he wants he could also use the latest and greatest Office 365, with a simple options change disable any tip, spell checks, auto corrects, or anything else, and type the same way he is used to.
Zillions of different editors exist. What should someone who has not bothered to consider all of them be called?
There's no such thing as perfect software.
Who is talking about perfect software?
Gilgado's comments are also hypocritical. The premise is that software is finished and perfect,
The post is about finished software not perfect software. Nobody is talking about perfect software.
"This program embodies the concept of finished software - a software you can use forever with no unneeded changes."
It also postulates a world where efficiency is derived purely from memory, saying you were efficient given that you knew the location of the button without ever considering if that location is the best place for it.
No such world is being postulated. What the post does point out is there is a cost "learning curve" to change.
If you want to talk about efficiency the ribbon is a good example. Love it or hate it, studies have shown that for the majority of what you do in a word processor it has reduced the number of clicks needed to do most tasks in the software, and that in terms of user expectance the only people who hated it were those who had spent years learning the older interface.
UI elements may make software easier to learn or use yet ease of use does not translate to efficiency. What menu items are worth taking ones hands off the home row of the keyboard and placing them on a pointing device when that can be avoided entirely through memorization of codes and cords? Wordstar 4 doesn't even have mouse support. Professionals who write for a living have vastly different value judgements about features and software than casual users.