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How Google Docs Proved the Power of Less
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At the same time, Google’s incremental approach to improving Docs also reveals a dilemma that the company often faces when trying to improve its most-used products. Introducing lots of changes is appealing to designers, developers, and the tech enthusiasts like me that they serve, but often causes average users to revolt.
Casey Newton • Google's Docs dilemma
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Take the humble “document” as an example. For decades, document editing programs like word processors effectively emulated a printed sheet of paper, onto which the user typed with an emulated typewriter. Other software tools like spreadsheets did better, managing to escape complete skeuomorphism in favor of an infinite canvas. Notion is another goo... See more
Linus Lee • How we create | linus.coffee
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It does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type up a lowercase letter and it becomes a capital. I don't want a capital, if I'd wanted a capital, I would have typed the capital.
George R.R. Martin
The beauty of finished software
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In a world where constant change is the norm, finished software —a software you can use forever with no unneeded change —provides a breath of fresh air. It’s a reminder that reliability, consistency, and user satisfaction can coexist in the realm of software development.
Today’s document tools aren’t built for discussion. We’ve seen so many improvements in how you can write docs like collaborative editing, relational tables, fancy blocks, and more. These features are powerful but they incentivize us to polish and present our ideas. We should spend less time writing documents and more time discussing the ideas.
Ayesha Bose • Documents aren’t built for discussion.
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And this also brings us to the why now and and why is this hard if this is the fully generalized form of digital documents, why didn't software start this way? I think a big part of it is just that it's hard. We talked about how it's hard to write a text editor, but what if you now need to write a text editor and image editor, a video editor and au... See more
Muse • Infinite canvases with Steve Ruiz // Metamuse podcast episode 59
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Wildenhaus’s description has stayed with me because it reflects how the best software products aren’t just assemblages of functionality ,exposed by particular formal elements (links, buttons, icons, menus). Rather, they organize and shape how you think, and they create or sustain a particular lifestyle:
- How you think: In 1985, the writer and critic