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Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

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Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#31

Post by rwhitman »

Nutmog wrote: post #5

Can you not just clone the shitty product so existing training is still useful? Do software companies enforce copyrights on things like the location of buttons and the names of menu items?

Patents are probably the most powerful tool for entrenched players here. Adobe patented several GUI conventions including their most common shortcut key commands in Photoshop, so that competitors would always have a slight learning curve for new users.

Occasionally more aggressive companies will come after a cloned product with a lawsuit, for instance Facebook sued a number of early competitors for various intellectual property and trademark reasons. Doesn't hold up in court publicly but I imagine there have been a lot of backroom settlements made this way over the years.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#33

Post by WA »

Marcus316 wrote: post #20
WA wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it. Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed. So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out o…

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it. I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed…

I'm glad you posted :) I also use it as a devlog. If I want to remember some commands for example. Sometimes, I even plan entire days in my JOURNAL.TXT. For longer thoughts, I use a journaling app.

But the nice thing about a textfile is: You can search in it very easily, you can make backups, and there's never any regret for having written something in it.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#34

Post by fumar »

geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Microsoft Office (by the way 2016 is a pretty solid software suite) is not thriving because of institutional knowledge. Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications (learn how to use it) and apply the same learnings to the rest of the suite, personal knowledge with a small learning curve. Also, tools like Excel are malleable and useable for most users in a company. If I create a unique data set in R, but would like to share it to everyone and have them play - its not going to spread very far. If I do the same in Excel, everyone can take a look and manipulate the data. I like to think of Office is a practical solution for most business with a wide range of users who are "generalists."

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#35

Post by WA »

Raphmedia wrote: post #23
WA wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it. Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed. So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out o…

Start a blog! It's so easy those days. Most even have mobile apps so you can write blog posts on the go!

I'm actually about to do this. I have a bunch of first posts so far. But with a blog, the expectation is very similar: If I put in the effort to write (elaborate) blog posts, I expect some kind of return (views, maybe even comments).

I don't want to put private thoughts in my blog. And not all thoughts are thought through.

I want to use this blog as a recycling container for comments and ideas I post in communities. But it's far less personal than my journal.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#37

Post by CyberDildonics »

thedevil wrote: post #29
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

In a past life, I made (very expensive) spreadsheets for a living. And though I don't like most Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure that Excel was built by God himself (or at least He was the lead dev or the PM).

What makes you say that?

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#38

Post by eterm »

elcapitan wrote: post #18
eterm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except "proper software engineering" would mean whatever is being built simply never gets built. In many cases it's better to get somewhere quickly with excel then work out if "proper software engineering" is required than never get off the ground because engineering something is too difficult. Think of excel like lego. Someone can quickly build something out of lego. Now if someone tried to build a cathedral from le…

There's actually an interesting gap between 'building some model in Excel' and 'moving on into a programming model where code and data are separated'. Like generating model code in some normal programming language from a spreadsheet.

Does VBA fill that gap? I once worked on a system where one of the more important parts of the business was a system of VBA modules in an access file.

One of my more important contributions as a fresh graduate entering the workplace was to get people to copy the file from the network share to a local drive before running. Run-times went from "leave overnight" to ~15 minutes.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#39

Post by psykovsky »

jrcii wrote: post #11
geori wrote: post #2

MS Office (specifically Excel) is not a shitty product. There's a reason why it has a larger monopoly with finance types Wall Street than Google does with search. Power users can quickly build powerful financial models with it.

Excel is not perfect but it is best in class. I've built and maintained a time-series statistics research database for one of the largest trade associations in the world for over 10 years which heavily integrates with Excel. In so doing I've become intimately familiar with its quarks and shortcomings but ultimately it always provides a path to accomplish your goals, including high-performance automation https://msdn.…

you seem to be talking about php...

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#40

Post by psykovsky »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #37
thedevil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a past life, I made (very expensive) spreadsheets for a living. And though I don't like most Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure that Excel was built by God himself (or at least He was the lead dev or the PM).

What makes you say that?

he never used openoffice or libreoffice...
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