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I switched from Finale to Dorico about a year ago. It was like night and day in terms of user-friendliness. Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbag

I switched from Finale to Dorico about a year ago. It was like night and day in terms of user-friendliness. Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage. On Windows, it (really the Aria player) insisted on complete ownership of my audio output, too, which was a real pain.

computerdork 2y ago
Did the same thing about the same time - consulted with a composition professor, and he said that he didn't know anyone that was using Finale, so realized it was time to switch after using for 2 decades. Agreed about the user-friendliness. Dorico is one of the most well thought-out, beautiful pieces of software I've seen. Really like the idea of modes - it's a bit complex at first, but think more software should do this. It's a really good way to separate features into different areas, to prevent the shotgun approach that most pieces of large software use, of just splattering features everywhere. Still, end of an era.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Yeah, I had been a finale user for >10 years, and it was a slow deterioration on MakeMusic's part, but I got frog boiled by it.
  - computerdork 2y ago
    frog-boiled, haha, good way to put it:)
- bjoli 2y ago
  Nice to read this. I was taught finale when I was in school in the early 00s. I went on to study music (as a performer) and my notational needs were covered by writing by hand or by lilypond). I never though anything would actually threaten Sibelius or Finale, so reading about a new (and good) product has flbeen great. Maybe it introduces new ways composers can make strange errors when writing music :)
dahart 2y ago
> Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage It seems like the letter fully confirms & validates your feeling. ;) There’s just no GUI software started 35 years ago that’s still alive and feels modern and unbloated. Okay, there might be something, but I want to see the examples that prove me wrong. Things that come to mind are like Photoshop or Word, both bloated with legacy and might be dying to web apps. Or Windows itself, also loaded down with legacy. UX standards and expectations have (thankfully) gone way up over time, and it’s practically impossible to keep up without starting over with fresh applications, especially for boutique shops.
- Clamchop 2y ago
  I don't really like "bloated" as a descriptor, because it's so unspecific that it's hard to argue against. Does it mean the software is slow? Too cluttered and disorganized? Too feature-heavy? Compromised by backward compatibility? In any case, Photoshop, Word, and Windows are not in Finale's position clearly, as they're still far and away leading their respective markets. So, whatever bloat they may have, it's not yet been fatal. Other old software that's been kept current includes Maya, Blender, Firefox (Netscape), MacOS (NeXTSTEP). I'm sure there are many other examples.
  - dahart 2y ago
    That’s fair, ‘bloated’ is very vague. And TBH I have multiple stories of devs complaining about bloat in order to justify a complete rewrite that turned out to be multi-million-dollar mistakes. OTOH, I’ve been developing software long enough that you see the same pattern over and over. All application software is fresh and fast at first, and then gets bloated over time, where bloated means it accrues technical debt and accrues hard-to-manage code and accrues features that conflict with each other and slow down development. Maya’s definitely bloated, and it has been for decades. Users were complaining about it being slow and buggy and a mess of a UI when I was using Maya in production more than 20 years ago. I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain. MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an existing nix. I hope Firefox and Blender last as long as Finale, only time will tell. But it’s a good point that some bloated software hasn’t died, I have to assume that is because they’re making enough money from it to continue its development. I guess that would be true for Finale too, but that the income isn’t sufficient to carry it forward.

computerdork 2y ago

Did the same thing about the same time - consulted with a composition professor, and he said that he didn't know anyone that was using Finale, so realized it was time to switch after using for 2 decades. Agreed about the user-friendliness. Dorico is one of the most well thought-out, beautiful pieces of software I've seen. Really like the idea of modes - it's a bit complex at first, but think more software should do this. It's a really good way to separate features into different areas, to prevent the shotgun approach that most pieces of large software use, of just splattering features everywhere. Still, end of an era.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
Yeah, I had been a finale user for >10 years, and it was a slow deterioration on MakeMusic's part, but I got frog boiled by it.
- computerdork 2y ago
  frog-boiled, haha, good way to put it:)
bjoli 2y ago
Nice to read this. I was taught finale when I was in school in the early 00s. I went on to study music (as a performer) and my notational needs were covered by writing by hand or by lilypond). I never though anything would actually threaten Sibelius or Finale, so reading about a new (and good) product has flbeen great. Maybe it introduces new ways composers can make strange errors when writing music :)

dahart 2y ago

> Finale felt heavily loaded down with legacy garbage It seems like the letter fully confirms & validates your feeling. ;) There’s just no GUI software started 35 years ago that’s still alive and feels modern and unbloated. Okay, there might be something, but I want to see the examples that prove me wrong. Things that come to mind are like Photoshop or Word, both bloated with legacy and might be dying to web apps. Or Windows itself, also loaded down with legacy. UX standards and expectations have (thankfully) gone way up over time, and it’s practically impossible to keep up without starting over with fresh applications, especially for boutique shops.

Clamchop 2y ago
I don't really like "bloated" as a descriptor, because it's so unspecific that it's hard to argue against. Does it mean the software is slow? Too cluttered and disorganized? Too feature-heavy? Compromised by backward compatibility? In any case, Photoshop, Word, and Windows are not in Finale's position clearly, as they're still far and away leading their respective markets. So, whatever bloat they may have, it's not yet been fatal. Other old software that's been kept current includes Maya, Blender, Firefox (Netscape), MacOS (NeXTSTEP). I'm sure there are many other examples.
- dahart 2y ago
  That’s fair, ‘bloated’ is very vague. And TBH I have multiple stories of devs complaining about bloat in order to justify a complete rewrite that turned out to be multi-million-dollar mistakes. OTOH, I’ve been developing software long enough that you see the same pattern over and over. All application software is fresh and fast at first, and then gets bloated over time, where bloated means it accrues technical debt and accrues hard-to-manage code and accrues features that conflict with each other and slow down development. Maya’s definitely bloated, and it has been for decades. Users were complaining about it being slow and buggy and a mess of a UI when I was using Maya in production more than 20 years ago. I went to the Maya developer’s conference around maybe 2002 and the devs were complaining about it being hard to maintain. MacOS got a total ground-up rewrite in between versions 9 and 10, and it helps they built the UI on top of an existing nix. I hope Firefox and Blender last as long as Finale, only time will tell. But it’s a good point that some bloated software hasn’t died, I have to assume that is because they’re making enough money from it to continue its development. I guess that would be true for Finale too, but that the income isn’t sufficient to carry it forward.