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I think the poor architecture is a direct result of there being too many features. Evernote has shoved so many features into the product that they haven't been

I think the poor architecture is a direct result of there being too many features. Evernote has shoved so many features into the product that they haven't been able to sufficiently hone individual features. This leaves them open to competitors who focus on a subset of features but do a much better job of implementing those features. Apple and Google get around this in different ways. While Apple has a broad set of products and features, they're pretty conservative in their pace of releasing new features. So they have plenty of time to hone and integrate new ones. Google seems to have solved this through radical decentralization. They don't really require that different products form an integrated whole. This allows individual teams to focus on delivering high-quality products without the architectural overhead of bundling everything into one product.

sitkack 11y ago
Only if synchronization is ad hoc. The world will no longer tolerate throwing another switch and gauge on panel and calling it good.
eitally 11y ago
Perhaps ironically, Evernote alienated thousands of power users when they did their big 2.2-->3.0 rewrite a few years ago. Evernote 2.2 on desktop (+ the browser extension) was tremendously awesome, and then they rewrote the whole thing in .Net and basically made the desktop client a webview, in the process removing about 90% of the features people loved while causing all the sync and stability problems people are still complaining about. I want to love Evernote because having a centralized, cross-platform, easily searchable repository for both binary content and text is hugely powerful, and there aren't really any viable competitors in this space. But, I don't trust the company and I don't trust the product, so I won't use it, and I'll stick with several different other products that together mostly fill the same use cases for me. One of those is Google Drive, but it's even clunkier than Evernote (although sync works great!).
- damian2000 11y ago
  They fell into the big rewrite trap ... possibly driven by developers hoping to clear out some cruft http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
  - jayvanguard 11y ago
    The article is dubious at best. You hear about the big failures or notice when rewrite releases take forever, but you never hear about the companies that slowly lose opportunities or fail to keep up with innovators because they keep trying patch a crappy codebase. Nor do you necessarily hear about the successful rewrites since they just happen under the covers.
    - jerf 11y ago
      One of the major points of the Joel article is that the best option is usually one you didn't name; incrementally fix the "crappy" codebase. At no point do you do a "big rewrite", at no point do you have a big step back, at no point do you lose the ability to make forward progress because the new code isn't ready and the old code is deprecated, etc. Even if it may take somewhat longer to get there, the integral of value over time often still comes out larger for incremental improvement. Developers want the default answer to "abandon the old mess and write a new one" (snarkiness fully on purpose); Joel's point is that the default answer ought to be incremental improvement. Not that it's always the right answer, but other answers ought to be scrutinized more closely than developers might like. From a professional point of view, it's actually perfectly fair to consider that greenfielding a new project with hot new tech (or even "newer"-but-established tech, my personal favorite choice) is more fun than trudging through old code. Human factors matter a lot. But we are also professionally obligated not to overprivilege it. Besides, if you treat it as a serious project instead of a series of hack jobs, in my experience, very serious incremental improvement still offers a lot of engineering challenge and fun. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is to prejudge incremental improvements as a hack job, when it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
      - 11y ago
- jacalata 11y ago
  >want to love Evernote because having a centralized, cross-platform, easily searchable repository for both binary content and text is hugely powerful, and there aren't really any viable competitors in this space. OneNote?
  - eitally 11y ago
    OneNote is the best current option, by far, but taking advantage of a lot of its best features require also using MS Office & Outlook, which is a nonstarter.
harryf 11y ago
> Evernote has shoved so many features into the product that they haven't been able to sufficiently hone individual features. ...and that's a really hard problem to fix as you need management (who may not understand the root cause at all) to be on the same page as engineers working on the lowest level of the product.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  If only they had some sort of automated communication mechanism that they could use to share the same pages of information between the engineers working on the lowest level of the product, and the management that needs to understand the root cause of it all...

sitkack 11y ago

Only if synchronization is ad hoc. The world will no longer tolerate throwing another switch and gauge on panel and calling it good.

eitally 11y ago

Perhaps ironically, Evernote alienated thousands of power users when they did their big 2.2-->3.0 rewrite a few years ago. Evernote 2.2 on desktop (+ the browser extension) was tremendously awesome, and then they rewrote the whole thing in .Net and basically made the desktop client a webview, in the process removing about 90% of the features people loved while causing all the sync and stability problems people are still complaining about. I want to love Evernote because having a centralized, cross-platform, easily searchable repository for both binary content and text is hugely powerful, and there aren't really any viable competitors in this space. But, I don't trust the company and I don't trust the product, so I won't use it, and I'll stick with several different other products that together mostly fill the same use cases for me. One of those is Google Drive, but it's even clunkier than Evernote (although sync works great!).

damian2000 11y ago
They fell into the big rewrite trap ... possibly driven by developers hoping to clear out some cruft http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
- jayvanguard 11y ago
  The article is dubious at best. You hear about the big failures or notice when rewrite releases take forever, but you never hear about the companies that slowly lose opportunities or fail to keep up with innovators because they keep trying patch a crappy codebase. Nor do you necessarily hear about the successful rewrites since they just happen under the covers.
  - jerf 11y ago
    One of the major points of the Joel article is that the best option is usually one you didn't name; incrementally fix the "crappy" codebase. At no point do you do a "big rewrite", at no point do you have a big step back, at no point do you lose the ability to make forward progress because the new code isn't ready and the old code is deprecated, etc. Even if it may take somewhat longer to get there, the integral of value over time often still comes out larger for incremental improvement. Developers want the default answer to "abandon the old mess and write a new one" (snarkiness fully on purpose); Joel's point is that the default answer ought to be incremental improvement. Not that it's always the right answer, but other answers ought to be scrutinized more closely than developers might like. From a professional point of view, it's actually perfectly fair to consider that greenfielding a new project with hot new tech (or even "newer"-but-established tech, my personal favorite choice) is more fun than trudging through old code. Human factors matter a lot. But we are also professionally obligated not to overprivilege it. Besides, if you treat it as a serious project instead of a series of hack jobs, in my experience, very serious incremental improvement still offers a lot of engineering challenge and fun. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is to prejudge incremental improvements as a hack job, when it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    - 11y ago
jacalata 11y ago
>want to love Evernote because having a centralized, cross-platform, easily searchable repository for both binary content and text is hugely powerful, and there aren't really any viable competitors in this space. OneNote?
- eitally 11y ago
  OneNote is the best current option, by far, but taking advantage of a lot of its best features require also using MS Office & Outlook, which is a nonstarter.

harryf 11y ago

> Evernote has shoved so many features into the product that they haven't been able to sufficiently hone individual features. ...and that's a really hard problem to fix as you need management (who may not understand the root cause at all) to be on the same page as engineers working on the lowest level of the product.

DonHopkins 11y ago
If only they had some sort of automated communication mechanism that they could use to share the same pages of information between the engineers working on the lowest level of the product, and the management that needs to understand the root cause of it all...