Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
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. |
Oh, good grief.
No, WordStar
wasn't that hard to learn. And there were classes. And there were good books. And there were WordStar forums and newsgroups. And no, I haven't rejected new programs because I want to "hold on to the past" and I'm not "afraid to learn something new." After all, I use Linux, which is a far cry from QDos (Sinclair QL), MS-DOS (actually DR-DOS for me), Windows 3.1, Windows 95, OS2, Windows 98 and Windows XP. Once you've learned one word processor, or one spreadsheet ... or one OS, or one
insert any program category here ... you know what they're supposed to do and it's just a matter of figuring out how that
particular program does it.
The reason I still like WordStar (at least remember it fondly) is because it was fast and efficient, both in the way you formatted with it and in the way you navigated in it. Where the newer WYSIWIG word processors excel is in formatting your documents -- but that also can get in the way of writing. You start fretting about the way your writing looks, rather than worrying about getting the words down. Presentation can become more important than the substance.
If you've never used WordStar, fine. But don't start with these patronizing psychological profiles when you really don't have a clue why people liked (and still like) WordStar.