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Archive: http://archive.is/ErT0D http://archive.is/ErT0D As I mentioned in several other comments, I use Word 97 to do most of my writing. It is a pleasure to

Archive: http://archive.is/ErT0D http://archive.is/ErT0D As I mentioned in several other comments, I use Word 97 to do most of my writing. It is a pleasure to use, frictionless, accessible, and never nags me. (As much as I miss Clippy, I unchecked that option in the installer.) I've read it runs great in Wine, but I thought it would feel more at home in a Windows ME virtual machine. (Since the hardware is virtualized, there are no stability issues.) Compared to anything released today, both FOSS and payware, it is leaps and bounds ahead. And, of course, it is no surprise, since during its development, including thousands of hours of user studies, the primary goals were accessibility, usability, and polish. Also, running inside a VM, and sharing resources with my development toolkit, it's still more responsive than anything else I've tried.

AussieWog93 6y ago
>Also, running inside a VM, and sharing resources with my development toolkit, it's still more responsive than anything else I've tried. One of the memories I have from adolescence is of a laptop that one of grandparents' friends showed me in around 2010. It was a decade old at that point, and ran both Windows and Office 2000. I remember booting up Excel, which loaded almost instanteously, and immediately started entering formulas into the cells with no input lag whatsoever. Word 2000 was a similar experience. Keep in mind this was on late 90's to early 00's _laptop_ hardware - maybe an 800MHz single core Pentium at best, and was an order of magnitude more responsive than Office 2010 on a then-current 3.33Ghz Core2 Duo. It seems things have become even worse since then - IM Apps that chew up 2GB of RAM (and I'm not just talking about Slack), email apps that cause games to lag if they're running in the background, and websites that scroll at 10fps.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I am optimistic about it. I think the frustration with the situation will keep building, until it reaches a point when developers have had enough, and things start rapidly improving again. I think the software world is large and complex enough for these cycles to take a while, but it's very much a case of the old saying: Bad software creates strong developers, strong developers create good software, good software creates weak developers, weak developers create bad software. This pattern comes in macro and micro cycles. A good example of the micro cycle can be observed in Windows releases, which generally have alternated between solid and weak starting with 3.1 (counting 95b and 98b as separate releases from 95a and 98a.) The macro cycle seems to take much longer, and we're just now starting to swing the other way. The beauty of the software world, as this article illustrates, is that it's feasible to freeze your environment at a good place and keep it there until the next solid software cycle. It's not possible with everything, but I've found that if I stick to either FOSS or emulated abandonware, I am in a pretty good place. I've abandoned Apple and Windows except for testing, and am very happy for it.
  - AussieWog93 6y ago
    I don't think it's as simple as "use FOSS" if you want good UI performance, aesthetics and usability. If anything, I'd say most FOSS is worse than commercial software, especially compared to the native stuff on macOS.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      No, it's not so simple at all, but the benefit over commercial software is that I usually have choices, whereas with Windows and Apple, I've had the rug pulled out from under me with no recourse on multiple occasions. I am blessed in that I am relatively patient and technically minded, and also have relatively few and simple demands. With these two blessings working in my favor, I've been able to set up with relative ease a system which works for me and doesn't change itself around without me asking. As much as I've tried, I was not able to achieve the same experience without FOSS, and I'm forever grateful to all involved in bringing me this experience. It's not as polished, but it's also not as arrogant and disruptive, a worthwhile tradeoff for me.
  - fuzzfactor 6y ago
    I agree that the cycles are multiple and interacting, but I do have a different outlook about the bad software. >Bad software creates strong developers In my opinion more so it allows a foothold for operators who should never get near development.
- coldtea 6y ago
  A lot of the BS delays is that everything today, even Excel or Word, feel the need to connect to the internet to get part of their content or updates or checks or autocompletes or the messages in their splash screen, or whatever, with the accompanying orders of magnitude compared to "load local assets" slowdowns in startup.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Often true, but I think it's only part of it. If you read about the history of Office 97 development, it was a truly remarkable amount of work which went into it. Every feature, even the tiniest, was user-tested for many hours, testers spent thousands of hours running through every option, usability and accessibility experts pored over every widget to ensure it looked perfect and had a keyboard shortcut, etc. It also helped that there was no "moving target" release cycle. There was no fixing it once the gold master was approved. And the result is a very nicely put together suite of applications with pixel-perfect toolbars, icons, dialogs, etc. that just beams quality.
    - heenrik 6y ago
      Can you point me to any sources on the history of Office 97 (or other earlier applications) development?
      - fuzzfactor 6y ago
        I don't know about the sources, but about a decade ago the first generation of ultra-high-performance office administrators, who had made the original transition from typewriters to PC's, reached maxiumum maturity before retirement. Their leadership was consistent that no version of Microsoft Office allowed greater personal productivity than Office 97. They had worked with them all up to that point, always modernizing at the bleeding edge. In hindsight the only reason for newer versions of Office was thought to be occasions where there was an extreme need for features not present in Office 97. Of course it had always been too late for them to do anything about it since they were so modern they were the ones tasked with dropping earlier versions as soon as possible after a new version was released. Naturally that depth of knowledge will never be replaced.

AussieWog93 6y ago

>Also, running inside a VM, and sharing resources with my development toolkit, it's still more responsive than anything else I've tried. One of the memories I have from adolescence is of a laptop that one of grandparents' friends showed me in around 2010. It was a decade old at that point, and ran both Windows and Office 2000. I remember booting up Excel, which loaded almost instanteously, and immediately started entering formulas into the cells with no input lag whatsoever. Word 2000 was a similar experience. Keep in mind this was on late 90's to early 00's _laptop_ hardware - maybe an 800MHz single core Pentium at best, and was an order of magnitude more responsive than Office 2010 on a then-current 3.33Ghz Core2 Duo. It seems things have become even worse since then - IM Apps that chew up 2GB of RAM (and I'm not just talking about Slack), email apps that cause games to lag if they're running in the background, and websites that scroll at 10fps.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
I am optimistic about it. I think the frustration with the situation will keep building, until it reaches a point when developers have had enough, and things start rapidly improving again. I think the software world is large and complex enough for these cycles to take a while, but it's very much a case of the old saying: Bad software creates strong developers, strong developers create good software, good software creates weak developers, weak developers create bad software. This pattern comes in macro and micro cycles. A good example of the micro cycle can be observed in Windows releases, which generally have alternated between solid and weak starting with 3.1 (counting 95b and 98b as separate releases from 95a and 98a.) The macro cycle seems to take much longer, and we're just now starting to swing the other way. The beauty of the software world, as this article illustrates, is that it's feasible to freeze your environment at a good place and keep it there until the next solid software cycle. It's not possible with everything, but I've found that if I stick to either FOSS or emulated abandonware, I am in a pretty good place. I've abandoned Apple and Windows except for testing, and am very happy for it.
- AussieWog93 6y ago
  I don't think it's as simple as "use FOSS" if you want good UI performance, aesthetics and usability. If anything, I'd say most FOSS is worse than commercial software, especially compared to the native stuff on macOS.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    No, it's not so simple at all, but the benefit over commercial software is that I usually have choices, whereas with Windows and Apple, I've had the rug pulled out from under me with no recourse on multiple occasions. I am blessed in that I am relatively patient and technically minded, and also have relatively few and simple demands. With these two blessings working in my favor, I've been able to set up with relative ease a system which works for me and doesn't change itself around without me asking. As much as I've tried, I was not able to achieve the same experience without FOSS, and I'm forever grateful to all involved in bringing me this experience. It's not as polished, but it's also not as arrogant and disruptive, a worthwhile tradeoff for me.
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  I agree that the cycles are multiple and interacting, but I do have a different outlook about the bad software. >Bad software creates strong developers In my opinion more so it allows a foothold for operators who should never get near development.
coldtea 6y ago
A lot of the BS delays is that everything today, even Excel or Word, feel the need to connect to the internet to get part of their content or updates or checks or autocompletes or the messages in their splash screen, or whatever, with the accompanying orders of magnitude compared to "load local assets" slowdowns in startup.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Often true, but I think it's only part of it. If you read about the history of Office 97 development, it was a truly remarkable amount of work which went into it. Every feature, even the tiniest, was user-tested for many hours, testers spent thousands of hours running through every option, usability and accessibility experts pored over every widget to ensure it looked perfect and had a keyboard shortcut, etc. It also helped that there was no "moving target" release cycle. There was no fixing it once the gold master was approved. And the result is a very nicely put together suite of applications with pixel-perfect toolbars, icons, dialogs, etc. that just beams quality.
  - heenrik 6y ago
    Can you point me to any sources on the history of Office 97 (or other earlier applications) development?
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      I don't know about the sources, but about a decade ago the first generation of ultra-high-performance office administrators, who had made the original transition from typewriters to PC's, reached maxiumum maturity before retirement. Their leadership was consistent that no version of Microsoft Office allowed greater personal productivity than Office 97. They had worked with them all up to that point, always modernizing at the bleeding edge. In hindsight the only reason for newer versions of Office was thought to be occasions where there was an extreme need for features not present in Office 97. Of course it had always been too late for them to do anything about it since they were so modern they were the ones tasked with dropping earlier versions as soon as possible after a new version was released. Naturally that depth of knowledge will never be replaced.