5 ms·

Why don't you like Word? I think it's still going to be the best for a while, if not only because it's massive. My CS professor says it's the biggest program e

Why don't you like Word? I think it's still going to be the best for a while, if not only because it's massive. My CS professor says it's the biggest program ever written. It can so so much, like check for passive voice and more subtle grammar things. At the end of the day, the subscription model is off-putting, but "needs to die?" why?

wes-t 8y ago
I can only assume you're asking because you're not using it for you day-to-day job?
SllX 8y ago
1. Your CS professor does not sound very good at his job judging purely from the very tiny amount of information you have shared. I am sorry you have to deal with that. 2. I, at no point, stated or even implied that Word needs to die. I am largely indifferent towards Word. It is a piece of infrastructure that other people rely on, and as such, it will continue to have a place on the market. My point is that it was Infrastructure at all, not to criticize others for using it, or Microsoft for continuing to develop it, or the Office team for their work on it. This is true for many projects, and overall there seems to be a type of software which becomes infrastructure and will never be replaced even when software critics believe it should be replaced.
rococode 8y ago
The entire 2013 Microsoft Office suite clocked in at ~45m lines of code, so Word is not even close to some of the really large programs considering Office also includes Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc. [1] While we're on the subject, the biggest issue I personally have with Word is formatting, specifically dealing with images, tables, and padding. I feel that it's pretty satisfactory for day-to-day tasks, though. [1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-li...
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Personally, I like Word, because it has a particular niche - fast WYSIWYG use and mid-sized documents. That is, I can quickly make the exact nice-looking document I need, and print it. Without clunky UX (of Open/LibreOffice), and without it choking on mid-sized documents that's characteristic of GSuite and friends.
- otikik 8y ago
  I would not call it WYSIWYG. Send it to a friend with a slightly different version of Office or Windows, or without the same fonts installed, or with a different locale, or a different printer, and it stops being WYSIWYG.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I'll grant you the version difference, but otherwise I strongly disagree. Font issue doesn't exist if you use standard fonts and is solvable in general by ticking the "embed fonts" checkbox. You're better off than with SaaS versions, which offer you a very small selection of fonts. With printers, it's actually MS Office that can paper over the differences between models and drivers; you're better off by default. With the set of available feature, Word is as close to WYSIWYG as you can possibly get.
jen729w 8y ago
Because it tries to do far too much and fails at the basics. Keeping track of the margin/indent settings for bulleted lists across a 50+ page document? Shambles. Trying to guess which header you want and insisting on auto-formatting the wrong one, time and time again? Infuriating. Weird behaviour where it promotes the penultimate paragraph to a section header if you delete the last paragraph of a section? Deeply confusing and hidden ‘Styles’ functionality that affects the visual layout of your document in ways that a beginner couldn’t possibly understand? I wish I’d kept a blog of Word’s infuriating behaviour over the years (except at the time, all I want is for the thing to let me finish the document I’m being forced to work on so that I can stop using it as soon as possible). And they just keep shovelling shit in to the product. STOP IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. The worst part is that for 95% of the cases, Word is entirely unnecessary. I’ve seen – god help me, I’ve written – 100+ page corporate documents that could just have easily been put together in Wordpad using RTF. But no, it’s got to be in Word. The thing is a fucking curse.
- rusk 8y ago
  Word is hard for detail-oriented people like programmers. I want to be able to control and tweak every single bit just the way I like it, and it frustrates me that it just seems to think it knows better a lot of the time, or that it doesn't let me undo its mistakes in any obvious way. But when it comes out at the end, it usually looks fine. I try to remember that it's the paper-based outcome that Word is designed around, so ultimately for the intermediate digital artefacts "just fine" is good enough. I'm not saying it's right, but most day-to-day users are probably fine with it.
jonathanstrange 8y ago
> Why don't you like Word? Here are my main reasons: - It does not allow me to make selections where I point my mouse cursor. - It breaks between versions of itself and intentionally breaks interoperability with nearly all third party software, especially when tables and formulas are involved. - Formula and math editing and typesetting is abysmal. - The quality of typesetting is abysmal. I know because I once had to convert an article with formulas written in LaTeX by hand into Word. The editor of the journal was very ashamed of the quality of the result in comparison to the original. - Images and other boxes inserted into the text almost never work in the intended way. They slip between pages, get the wrong flow around them, cannot be selected, etc. - It is practically impossible to import documents produced in other tools reliably into Word or reliably export Word documents to be processed with other tools (like e.g. LaTeX). Even pandoc cannot compile to Word files that work reliably enough. Some of the errors that occur are nearly unfixable, e.g. bizarre things strange characters in lines that cannot be erased, stretched and distorted characters. - Horrible default auto styles. - Ribbon interface and other user interface problems that make Word one of the most unintuitive pieces of software on earth (many people just don't realize this, because they have been using it for so long and so often) - relatively expensive
- com2kid 8y ago
  > Formula and math editing Word supports LaTeX for formulas now! That aside, Word's formula editor is really powerful but it does have a learning curve. I'd say that once learned it is rather nice though. FWIW Unicode Math, Word's format for doing math input, is a published spec.
xte 8y ago
Well... Because is a complex, utter, inflexible software. For instance: I need to write a letter, on my desktop I start skeletor (Emacs built-in template solution) with a single keypress, choose the wright template, start writing in pure text, hit C-c C-e and choose the appropriate export format, for instance pdf via LaTeX. In a fraction of time I made a document far superior of any word-processor can ever made, without wasting time in formatting. Same if I have to create slides. Same if I have to mix tabular data, literate stuff like write down a formula or a software procedure and verify it live from the code inside the document etc. The level of ease, flexibility, simplicity, reusability, integration you can have on text-centric systems you can't even imaging to reach with modern/classic GUIs. Another example from my personal workflow: sometime I have to put notes in agenda, like TODO: fix xyz etc. I can simply add relevant SCHEDULED or DEADLINE or whatever in the file I'm working on and see it properly in agenda. I can have documents spread on multiple files for many reason but being presented and exported as a single one or vice versa. I can link emails anywhere, export them inside the document etc. No other IDE, PIM suite, office suite can do the same.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > hit C-c C-e I have no idea what this even means so it’s already too complicated for me to follow!
  - xte 8y ago
    Well. Basically if I have to write a letter I: - hit a single key on my keyboard (pause to be precise) - hit 'l' followed by few arrow down to choose between italian, french, swedish or english letter template than enter - start type the letter (my sender address autocompleted, I only type firs letter than tab and yasnippet insert the rest correctly) - hit a two key combination (control+c than control+e) or run org-export and quickly answer (with predefined defaults) where to save my file than create and open a nice pdf ready to print, optional scanned signature included. Of course that work anywhere on my desktop, I do not have to open any specific application, choose templates, choose from them, fight to format the text properly, find in complex menu how to insert an image (my signature), go looking for it on disk etc. Of course my letter get properly saved/archived digitally, I can send via mail in other two keystrokes etc. It's normal that sound complicated for you if you never tried it. I see many colleges that remain astonished seeing my demos inside Emacs and can't hardly figure out what happen on my desktop. It's a path to learn something new and effective, but learn an OS, a different system not a simple single-purpose application.
pjc50 8y ago
Checking for passive voice is not something that should be done.

wes-t 8y ago

I can only assume you're asking because you're not using it for you day-to-day job?

SllX 8y ago

1. Your CS professor does not sound very good at his job judging purely from the very tiny amount of information you have shared. I am sorry you have to deal with that. 2. I, at no point, stated or even implied that Word needs to die. I am largely indifferent towards Word. It is a piece of infrastructure that other people rely on, and as such, it will continue to have a place on the market. My point is that it was Infrastructure at all, not to criticize others for using it, or Microsoft for continuing to develop it, or the Office team for their work on it. This is true for many projects, and overall there seems to be a type of software which becomes infrastructure and will never be replaced even when software critics believe it should be replaced.

rococode 8y ago

The entire 2013 Microsoft Office suite clocked in at ~45m lines of code, so Word is not even close to some of the really large programs considering Office also includes Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc. [1] While we're on the subject, the biggest issue I personally have with Word is formatting, specifically dealing with images, tables, and padding. I feel that it's pretty satisfactory for day-to-day tasks, though. [1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/ https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-li...

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Personally, I like Word, because it has a particular niche - fast WYSIWYG use and mid-sized documents. That is, I can quickly make the exact nice-looking document I need, and print it. Without clunky UX (of Open/LibreOffice), and without it choking on mid-sized documents that's characteristic of GSuite and friends.

otikik 8y ago
I would not call it WYSIWYG. Send it to a friend with a slightly different version of Office or Windows, or without the same fonts installed, or with a different locale, or a different printer, and it stops being WYSIWYG.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I'll grant you the version difference, but otherwise I strongly disagree. Font issue doesn't exist if you use standard fonts and is solvable in general by ticking the "embed fonts" checkbox. You're better off than with SaaS versions, which offer you a very small selection of fonts. With printers, it's actually MS Office that can paper over the differences between models and drivers; you're better off by default. With the set of available feature, Word is as close to WYSIWYG as you can possibly get.

jen729w 8y ago

Because it tries to do far too much and fails at the basics. Keeping track of the margin/indent settings for bulleted lists across a 50+ page document? Shambles. Trying to guess which header you want and insisting on auto-formatting the wrong one, time and time again? Infuriating. Weird behaviour where it promotes the penultimate paragraph to a section header if you delete the last paragraph of a section? Deeply confusing and hidden ‘Styles’ functionality that affects the visual layout of your document in ways that a beginner couldn’t possibly understand? I wish I’d kept a blog of Word’s infuriating behaviour over the years (except at the time, all I want is for the thing to let me finish the document I’m being forced to work on so that I can stop using it as soon as possible). And they just keep shovelling shit in to the product. STOP IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. The worst part is that for 95% of the cases, Word is entirely unnecessary. I’ve seen – god help me, I’ve written – 100+ page corporate documents that could just have easily been put together in Wordpad using RTF. But no, it’s got to be in Word. The thing is a fucking curse.

rusk 8y ago
Word is hard for detail-oriented people like programmers. I want to be able to control and tweak every single bit just the way I like it, and it frustrates me that it just seems to think it knows better a lot of the time, or that it doesn't let me undo its mistakes in any obvious way. But when it comes out at the end, it usually looks fine. I try to remember that it's the paper-based outcome that Word is designed around, so ultimately for the intermediate digital artefacts "just fine" is good enough. I'm not saying it's right, but most day-to-day users are probably fine with it.

jonathanstrange 8y ago

> Why don't you like Word? Here are my main reasons: - It does not allow me to make selections where I point my mouse cursor. - It breaks between versions of itself and intentionally breaks interoperability with nearly all third party software, especially when tables and formulas are involved. - Formula and math editing and typesetting is abysmal. - The quality of typesetting is abysmal. I know because I once had to convert an article with formulas written in LaTeX by hand into Word. The editor of the journal was very ashamed of the quality of the result in comparison to the original. - Images and other boxes inserted into the text almost never work in the intended way. They slip between pages, get the wrong flow around them, cannot be selected, etc. - It is practically impossible to import documents produced in other tools reliably into Word or reliably export Word documents to be processed with other tools (like e.g. LaTeX). Even pandoc cannot compile to Word files that work reliably enough. Some of the errors that occur are nearly unfixable, e.g. bizarre things strange characters in lines that cannot be erased, stretched and distorted characters. - Horrible default auto styles. - Ribbon interface and other user interface problems that make Word one of the most unintuitive pieces of software on earth (many people just don't realize this, because they have been using it for so long and so often) - relatively expensive

com2kid 8y ago
> Formula and math editing Word supports LaTeX for formulas now! That aside, Word's formula editor is really powerful but it does have a learning curve. I'd say that once learned it is rather nice though. FWIW Unicode Math, Word's format for doing math input, is a published spec.

xte 8y ago

Well... Because is a complex, utter, inflexible software. For instance: I need to write a letter, on my desktop I start skeletor (Emacs built-in template solution) with a single keypress, choose the wright template, start writing in pure text, hit C-c C-e and choose the appropriate export format, for instance pdf via LaTeX. In a fraction of time I made a document far superior of any word-processor can ever made, without wasting time in formatting. Same if I have to create slides. Same if I have to mix tabular data, literate stuff like write down a formula or a software procedure and verify it live from the code inside the document etc. The level of ease, flexibility, simplicity, reusability, integration you can have on text-centric systems you can't even imaging to reach with modern/classic GUIs. Another example from my personal workflow: sometime I have to put notes in agenda, like TODO: fix xyz etc. I can simply add relevant SCHEDULED or DEADLINE or whatever in the file I'm working on and see it properly in agenda. I can have documents spread on multiple files for many reason but being presented and exported as a single one or vice versa. I can link emails anywhere, export them inside the document etc. No other IDE, PIM suite, office suite can do the same.

chrisseaton 8y ago
> hit C-c C-e I have no idea what this even means so it’s already too complicated for me to follow!
- xte 8y ago
  Well. Basically if I have to write a letter I: - hit a single key on my keyboard (pause to be precise) - hit 'l' followed by few arrow down to choose between italian, french, swedish or english letter template than enter - start type the letter (my sender address autocompleted, I only type firs letter than tab and yasnippet insert the rest correctly) - hit a two key combination (control+c than control+e) or run org-export and quickly answer (with predefined defaults) where to save my file than create and open a nice pdf ready to print, optional scanned signature included. Of course that work anywhere on my desktop, I do not have to open any specific application, choose templates, choose from them, fight to format the text properly, find in complex menu how to insert an image (my signature), go looking for it on disk etc. Of course my letter get properly saved/archived digitally, I can send via mail in other two keystrokes etc. It's normal that sound complicated for you if you never tried it. I see many colleges that remain astonished seeing my demos inside Emacs and can't hardly figure out what happen on my desktop. It's a path to learn something new and effective, but learn an OS, a different system not a simple single-purpose application.

pjc50 8y ago

Checking for passive voice is not something that should be done.