[ExI] Weird new way to do physics

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Nov 2011, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>> Hi Everyone!
>>
> [...]
>>   Meanwhile, the greasy kid from Washington could not talk the
>> WordPerfect people into supporting his newfangled Windows program,
>> because they were too busy cooperating with IBM in producing a word
>> processor for the "obviously superior in every technical way" OS/2...
>> and the story started that Windows would be an also ran, and they
>> didn't immediatly port WordPerfect to Windows. And when they did, they
>> discovered it to be difficult. Very difficult. Partially because they
>> were still writing in assembler. Never mind now that WordPerfect ran
>> on something like 29 platforms already... So anyway, the kid from
>> Washington had to write his own word processor for Windows, and Word
>> was foisted upon the world.
>
> I smell a contradiction here... Since they have already ported WP to so
> many so different targets, the reason for failing with next port is not so
> obvious to me. Unless...

The NeXT was WordPerfect's first port to a mouse and windows system.
The guy who did it (in six months) started from scratch writing it in
Objective-C. Since he did it so fast and so well, he was promoted over
the group doing the port to Windows. They got a late start because (as
I heard from those involved) number three man Pete Peterson wanted to
teach Bill a lesson, by not supporting his new operating system by the
biggest program out there, WordPerfect. Guess Pete taught Bill a
lesson! Not!

> [...]
>>   While there are many morals to this story, one moral is that picking
>> the most optimal programming language is usually the least of your
>> problems. Smart kids from another place are usually a bigger problem.
>
> ...unless the real problem with sleazy kids is they make their system in
> such a way, that only their own programs work well on such platform, while
> others are either denied the information or the system refuses running the
> program or... I think many application makers mark beginning of their fall
> as soon as they tried to compete with Sleazy Soft. Or as soon as Sleazy
> Soft turned its eye on their business. This has not so much to do with
> choice of right language or proper practice. IMHO, more like fighting
> uphill battle in the dark and using guns sold to you by your opponent.
> Wow, guns don't work. Wow, our maps are wrong. Crap.

And this is exactly what the trial currently going on in Utah is all
about. It will be interesting to see what the court has to say in the
end. Even though it will almost certainly be appealed, no matter who
wins. The money is just too big.

> If we add to this the demise of any other hardware beyond PC, there is
> simply no place to hide from Sleazy. Time will show if this is going to
> change. The playground is changing constantly. And the sleazy kids have
> the one problem, and very big - they are, I think, masters of one trick
> only.

We always have Linux...

As Stefano pointed out, the human interface to the first version of
WordPerfect was also flawed. This was because of two things. The power
of the "shared code" group that insisted that the Windows port use
large parts of the DOS program, and that they got a late start because
of the wish of Pete Peterson to punish Microsoft. There were a lot of
late nights over there when they finally figured out that Windows was
going to be relevant, and that OS/2 was going the way of the dodo.

It is a complex story to be sure. I'm just adding what I know from the
local folklore, living in Utah County the whole time this all was
going on. Of course the Pete Peterson thing was all rumor... but from
people that were pretty close to the situation. Some of whom were
really mad and blamed Pete, not Bill for their demise.

Why in the hell Novel decided to buy WordPerfect at the time was
completely beyond me, at the time. Some said it was because of the
personal relationship between Norda and Ashton... and because
WordPerfect's books were too disheveled for them to go public. Left
Alan with a problem of how to cash out... Alan had a very strong bias
against going public, thought that a private company was run better.
May be the case, but certainly not in the accounting department. Novel
got awful good at buying companies and killing them, and WP was just
the biggest example of a trend. Not that the companies they bought
were bad... just that Novel couldn't capitalize on them after the
acquisition.

My company was almost acquired by both WP and Novel at the time...
just for reference.

-Kelly