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The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

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Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#21

Post by arglebargle75 »

sachin wrote: post #9
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20 years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the files created with these apps.

While we have no plans to go anywhere at Notejoy, we do acknowledge that this fear is very real. So to address it we support full bulk export of all your notes to Google Drive at any point, so you can rest assured that you'll always be able to take them with you.

Don't take this the wrong way, but... you've flipped multiple startups. Why would I believe that "you have no plans to go anywhere" this time?

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#22

Post by jen729w »

SllX wrote: post #3

At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep, sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and arguably better tools come along, it still never truly goes away. A lot of people still use emacs, vim, BBEdit and so on, but a lot of people also use IntelliJ, VSCode and Atom or whatever is in vogue this year. Vim and emacs will never truly go away no matter how…

Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die.

Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells.

Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to its functionality/friction curve (assuming you already know how to Excel, that is).

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#23

Post by dvtrn »

jen729w wrote: post #22
SllX wrote: post #3

At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep, sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and arguably better tools come along, it still never truly goes away. A lot of people still use emacs, vim, BBEdit and so on, but a lot of people also use IntelliJ, VSCode and Atom or whatever is in vogue this year. Vim and emacs will never truly go away no matter how…

Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells. Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to…

Is this truly attributable to what Excel is actually capable of (excluding those cases like people who manage to accomplish things like 3D rendering with excel) or that Excel just has better market saturation and is, by default, the only spreadsheet tool people in the Enterprise are given to work with and we just normalized ourselves to what it does, but maybe not so many other spreadsheet file formats?

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#24

Post by elithrar »

bkanber wrote: post #20
shanghaiaway wrote: post #2

Notion and Coda are attractive, but I'm wondering if the learning curve is too steep. Not sure if my team would use them without me setting everything up.

I use Notion for personal projects and love it. Very easy to learn. I used it to plan and execute my NaNoWriMo challenge last month and really have nothing bad to say about it. Works well on all my devices. But it's unstructured. I think in a work environment it's most useful as a wiki/project planner/lightweight tracker, but still can't replace the MS/Google office suite, and can't replace Jira/Asana for in depth ti…

I’d agree: Notion is great for individuals, a household, maybe even a small business? But it’d be a tough ask to scale to 100 people in an engineering org. But who knows, maybe it will find a niche like Basecamp did?

It is a wonderful replacement for Evernote though, and it makes you wonder what Evernote has been doing all these years? The formatting, drag/drop, multiple views on the same docs are great.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#26

Post by jdblair »

tonysdg wrote: post #8
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #7

One advantage of Microsoft Office is that I can reasonably expect that in 20 years Word will still be around and will be able to read the files I write today. With these apps, I would be surprised if in 5 years I could read the files created with these apps.

It's worth noting this is a testament to Microsoft's (extreme) dedication to backwards compatibility. I sometimes wonder who's more fanatical: the glibc folks or MS. But it seems to have paid off for both teams in the end, so (especially as a young engineer) who am I to judge?

This is especially noteworthy because the older Word formats were essentially memory dumps of the data structures used to store the document.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#27

Post by Elrac »

dvtrn wrote: post #23
jen729w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells. Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to…

Is this truly attributable to what Excel is actually capable of (excluding those cases like people who manage to accomplish things like 3D rendering with excel) or that Excel just has better market saturation and is, by default, the only spreadsheet tool people in the Enterprise are given to work with and we just normalized ourselves to what it does, but maybe not so many other spreadsheet file formats?

I also think Excel is great; but not because it's Excel or heavens forbid, because it's a Microsoft product, but because it's a spreadsheet.

The ability to throw data in a grid and massage it with operations the average human can understand - that's invaluable.

Certainly, Excel is powerful and feature-filled. But 95% or more of what I do in Excel I can also do in Google Sheets or Libre Calc or whatever.

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#28

Post by amphibian87 »

jen729w wrote: post #22
SllX wrote: post #3

At this point I look at Word and Excel the same way I look at bash, gcc, grep, sed, awk, et cetera: there is so much iniertia that even when different and arguably better tools come along, it still never truly goes away. A lot of people still use emacs, vim, BBEdit and so on, but a lot of people also use IntelliJ, VSCode and Atom or whatever is in vogue this year. Vim and emacs will never truly go away no matter how…

Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells. Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to…

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?

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#29

Post by wes-t »

amphibian87 wrote: post #28
jen729w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word, yes. Word is a turd. Word needs to die. Excel, however, is magic. Forget the nasty ribbon interface and the horrid MS window chrome, I'm just talking about what happens inside those cells. Say what you will about Microsoft as a company, about the fact that Excel is possibly over-used and that users should probably get a database. I don't care. Excel, at its core, is a magical product. Nothing else gets close to…

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?

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

Re: The new word processor wars: A fresh crop of productivity apps

#30

Post by hnzix »

elithrar wrote: post #24
bkanber wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Notion for personal projects and love it. Very easy to learn. I used it to plan and execute my NaNoWriMo challenge last month and really have nothing bad to say about it. Works well on all my devices. But it's unstructured. I think in a work environment it's most useful as a wiki/project planner/lightweight tracker, but still can't replace the MS/Google office suite, and can't replace Jira/Asana for in depth ti…

I’d agree: Notion is great for individuals, a household, maybe even a small business? But it’d be a tough ask to scale to 100 people in an engineering org. But who knows, maybe it will find a niche like Basecamp did? It is a wonderful replacement for Evernote though, and it makes you wonder what Evernote has been doing all these years? The formatting, drag/drop, multiple views on the same docs are great .

Evernote started the trend but Microsoft destroyed them in the same way they killed Netscape; OneNote is free beer and it's deeply integrated with the Office suite.

I can scan a whiteboard using MS Lens on my phone and it's instantly available on my laptop in OneNote. Oh and I don't have to convince the SOE nazis to allow install.

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