Software that's enjoyable ... software that's a drudgery

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 2, 2015 at 03:59 PM

In my first real career-oriented job almost 35 years ago, I was a copywriter for the bicycle manufacturer Cannondale. I pounded out my (admittedly crappy) copy on an IBM Selectric Typewriter. As we didn’t need a full-time copywriter, I also helped out in other ways. One of these was re-typing my copy into the typesetting machine (itself just a big word processor with a bunch of codes to adjust line length, alignment, text size, etc…

Anyway, my point is that when I got my first IBM PC with Wordstar as my word processor, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. In my view, all the refinements to computers and software in total since then amount to a smaller upgrade in ability than that one giant leap from typewriter to computer, in terms of writing. I use a notebook to jot down ideas, to log events, but I can’t write anything creative or worthwhile on anything but a computer. That probably says more about me than the applications. (And it doesn’t stop me from continuing to try and use all those new apps.)

Steve Z.