Lesscode.org, we have a problem!

I learn a lot from lesscode.org, and recommend it to others. However, today’s post beating up on 37signals is just way off. The complaint is with the very nifty new 37signals product, Writeboard. Alex says that he sent a writeboard to his wife who then struggled because she couldn’t just click on the text and start typing. I’m sorry, but unless she’s never done anything useful with a browser before, this just seems silly. Even my dad, who struggles with the most basic tasks on his computer, would click, pause, glance up and say “oh, there’s how this works right there” – then he’d be off and running (at his usual blindingly fast 12 words or so per minute) without more than 5 seconds of thought. I can’t imagine anyone thinking it was “very frustrating.”

“How’s this possible? I still can’t believe that the simplicity messiahs managed to deliver the product that is more complex than MS Word. You see, my wife never had a problem logging on to the Word document and create/edit/revise the content on the spot.”

More complex that MS Word? If by “complex” he means completely-different-and-much-less-complex than Word, I might agree. Sigh. Yes, I know it’s a writing tool, like Word. And even though I understand his point, there’s just way too much drama here over essentially a moment’s confusion.

I’ll assume we’ll be back to the usual quality programming tomorrow.