Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Just curious. I'm not touch-typist myself.
But I still have to wonder if the whole "WordStar keyboard commands were the bomb" thing isn't mostly due to the fact that it's what you (rhet) learned first and it worked, and you're loathe to learn something new. You know ... nostalgia.
There's certainly nothing wrong with not wanting to learn anything new, but I've yet to really hear anything that doesn't have an equivalent in modern word-processing software (while staying completely away from function keys and the mouse). There's standard ctrl editing codes, and alt-key menu shortcuts that today's touch-typists can manipulate just as efficiently (after learning them, of course) I think. Not to mention the ability to SEE the exact results of your efforts on the screen. *shrug*
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It's not just nostalgia.
It's also trauma.
No, seriously: learning to use those early productivity applications fully was a major effort in self-study. There were no classes (online or IRL), no video training courses, and you really needed to memorize entire new sets of commands and procedures for each application. One consequence was that people who went through the ordeal to learn one tool used it for everything they possibly could. There were people who would write formatting and pagination macros in Lotus 1-2-3 to use it as a word processor and people who would use the table functions of Wordperfect to run spreadsheet calculations.
As late as the early 90's, MSDOS users used on average less than three applications regularly. Mac users averaged nearly five because of the standard GUI, while Windows 3.x users averaged a whopping nine because of windows multitasking on top of GUI commonality and inhouse app development. (Visual BASIC really and truly was da bomb.) That and the declining hardware prices from the commoditization of computing power was the key driver behind the American productivity explosion of the 90's.
The result is that many of those early PC adopters invested so much time and effort in acquiring the skills to properly exploit those early tools that even after learning the new environments they are still loathe to leave behind those skills. It's not just Wordstar touch typing wizards or WordPerfect and Lotus Loyalists. There are entire companies running their businesses off 80's and 90's code bases.
Don't need to go too far to see how pervasive computing inertia is: companies are paying microsoft to keep on support XP systems when it would be cheaper, safer, and more effective to move to Win7 or 8.
But too many people believe that "if it ain't broke..."
GRRM is essentially a standalone operation so him clinging to a tool that has served him for nearly 40 years is essentially a harmless excentricity but at the corporate level IT inertia is costing many of them serious money and productivity. Plus exasperating Microsoft.
