Take a look at what was possible in the late 1980s with 8 MB of RAM: https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0

You can run NeXTStep in your browser by clicking above link. A couple of weeks ago you could run Framemaker as well. I was blown away by what Framemaker of the late 1980s could do. Today's Microsoft Word can't hold a candle to Framemaker of the late 1980s!

Edit: Here's how you start FrameMaker:

In Finder go to NextDeveloper > Demos > FrameMaker.app

Then open demo document and browse the pages of the demo document. Prepare to be blown away. You could do that in 1989 with like 64 MB of RAM??

In the last 37 years the industry has gone backwards. Microsoft Word has been stagnant due to no competition for the last few decades.

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lateforwork an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Here's a screenshot of FrameMaker I just took: https://imgur.com/a/CG8kZk8

Look at the fancy page layout that was possible in the late 1980s. Can Word do this today?

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digitalPhonix an hour ago | parent [-]

I think Publisher would be the equivalent to FrameMaker from the Office suite. Publisher from Office ~2016 could definitely do that.

Unfortunately I think Publisher has faired even worse than Word in terms of stagnation, and now looks to be discontinued?

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lateforwork an hour ago | parent [-]

Publisher is the equivalent of InDesign. It was meant for brochures and so on. If you want to write a long technical manual today most people use Word. In that respect we are using less powerful software today than our grandparents.

Note: Adobe bought FrameMaker and continues to sell FrameMaker. But Word has captured the market not because of its technical merit but because of bundling.

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ferguess_k 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

I have never written any technical manuals, but I'm surprised that Word is the choice of tool. How does one embed e.g. code easily in the document? I feel there must be a better way to do it, maybe some kind of markdown syntax? Latex?

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lateforwork 26 minutes ago | parent [-]

> How does one embed e.g. code easily in the document?

You don't. For APIs and such, documentation is published online, and you don't need Word for that. Word is used in some industries, where printed manual is needed.

	▲	ferguess_k 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		What about the printed manuals? I think they still have some of those not too long ago (e.g. Intel manuals). What was the tool chosen? Very curious to know. Or, maybe a legacy example -- how were the printed manuals of Microsoft C 6.0 written? That was in the early 90s I think.

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ferguess_k 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I think back then, due to the scarcity of RAM and HDD, developers, especially elite developers working for Apple/Microsoft/Borland/whatever really went for the last mile to squeeze as much performance as they could -- or, at least they spent way more time on this comparing to modern day developers -- even for the same applications (e.g. some native Windows programs on Win 2000 v.s. the re-written programs on Win 11).

Nowadays businesses simply don't care. They already achieved the feudal-ish bastion they have dreamed about, and there is no "business value" to spend too much time on it, unless ofc if it is something performance related, like A.I. or Supercomputing.

On the other hand, hardware today is 100X more complicated than the NeXTStep/Intel i486 days. Greybeards starting from the 70s/80s can gradually adapt to the complexity, while newcomers simply have to swim or die -- there is no "training" because any training on a toy computer or a toy OS is useless comparing to the massive architecture and complexity we face today.

I don't know. I wish the evolution of hardware is slower, but it's going to get to the point anyway. I recently completed the MIT xv6 labs and thought I was good enough to hack the kernel a bit, so I took another Linux device driver class, and OMG the complexity is unfathomable -- even the Makefile and KBuild stuffs are way way beyond my understanding. But hey, if I started from Linux 0.95, or maybe even Linux 1.0, I'd have much elss trouble to drill into a subsystem, and gradually adapt. That's why I think I need to give myself a year or two of training to scroll back to maybe Linux 0.95, and focus on just a simpler device driver (e.g. keyboard), and read EVERY evolution. There is no other way for commoners like us.