Friction vs. Features

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 17, 2023 at 11:44 AM

This is another example of “your mileage may vary.” I have the opposite reaction to Word. I hate writing in it. To me, trying to do anything but type in it is a major chore. It doesn’t help that Microsoft changes how things work in Word from time to time.

I used to do most of my writing (on my PC) in a plain text editor called Notetab, because it was so easy to open it and start typing (proving your point, Paul). It doesn’t work as well in more recent Windows editions, sadly.

Paul Korm wrote:
If software makes it easy to quickly start new, or open an existing
>document, and get going. And then continue writing without lag. Then
>it’s low friction.
> >Having written tens of thousands of pages in Word, I would say it for me
>is the lowest friction app I have. Just writing that feels like heresy.
> Yes, Word is bulked out with nightmarish ribbons, menus, confusing
>commands and features, but for basic just-get-it-down-and-fiddle-later
>writing, it serves me well. I’ve used it so much for so long that I
>don’t even see the cruft when I’m engaged in writing.
> >It’s interesting that a few tens of thousands of people use Obsidian
>(their claim), which a few hundred million people use Word (their
>claim). It can’t all be bad.
> >