4 ms·

Interesting. It seems like there's some good discussion over the past few days on hunting ground for good ideas. Everything is rightly disclaimed with a "not gu

by netcan 14y ago

Interesting. It seems like there's some good discussion over the past few days on hunting ground for good ideas. Everything is rightly disclaimed with a "not guaranteed to produce a good idea." Moving people from general tools to more specific ones is tricky. Most of the things people use spreadsheets or email for could be done with more specific tools, possibly better. Time tracking, data storage, project management, scheduling. General tools that you are already using have a lower overhead. I can guess at 2 big gotchas. (1) To move people to narrower tools you need a very big improvement. Slightly better isn't enough. For a lot of things there just isn't that much room for improvement. (2) When you move from general to specific tools the software dictates how the user does stuff more. This leaves room to get it wrong.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Using one tool instead of tons of better tools also has the advantage of just one tool to learn.
adrianc 14y ago
Have a look at https://pinad.com.au https://pinad.com.au - it might be the big improvement you speak about. It has structure and specialization for each of 81 categories currently available. I described a bit more in a reply to the main thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824233 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824233) Disclaimer: I'm the creator of pinad.com.au
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
pjungwir 14y ago
A while back I was reading some interviews with older famous programmers, like Dan Bricklin, author of Visicalc. Before the spreadsheet, everything was special-purpose. I think the reasons you give are a big part of why the spreadsheet was so valuable. That's not to say special-purpose business applications don't have a market, because obviously they do, but before building something like that I'd double- and triple-check that it's really better enough than a spreadsheet to be worthwhile.

by netcan 14y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

Using one tool instead of tons of better tools also has the advantage of just one tool to learn.

adrianc 14y ago

Have a look at https://pinad.com.au https://pinad.com.au - it might be the big improvement you speak about. It has structure and specialization for each of 81 categories currently available. I described a bit more in a reply to the main thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824233 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824233) Disclaimer: I'm the creator of pinad.com.au

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

pjungwir 14y ago

A while back I was reading some interviews with older famous programmers, like Dan Bricklin, author of Visicalc. Before the spreadsheet, everything was special-purpose. I think the reasons you give are a big part of why the spreadsheet was so valuable. That's not to say special-purpose business applications don't have a market, because obviously they do, but before building something like that I'd double- and triple-check that it's really better enough than a spreadsheet to be worthwhile.