Almost Perfect
by Brian Katcher · first published 2009
100% recommend
You only hurt the ones you love.Logan Witherspoon recently discovered that his girlfriend of three years cheated on him. But things start to look up when a new student breezes through the halls of his small-town high school. Sage Hendricks befriends Logan at a time when he no longer trusts or believes in people. Sage has been homeschooled for a number of years and her parents have forbidden her to date anyone, but she won't tell Logan why. One day, Logan acts on his growing feelings for Sage. Moments later, he wishes he never had. Sage finally discloses her big secret: she's actually a boy. En
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One of my favourite passages discusses what they tried to discourage in the office (from Chapter 11 – http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ap_chap11.shtml ) > Things like celebrating birthdays, throwing baby showers, collecting for gifts, selling Tupperware or Avon, managing sports tournaments, running betting pools, calling home to keep a romance alive or hand out chores to the children, gossiping or fli
on “Almost perfect: the rise and fall of WordPerfect Corporation (1993)” ↗WordPerfect was a great word processor at its prime, that is, in the ms-dos days in the 80s and early 90s. I’d love to be able to use the dos version, the article describes the Mac version which I never used so it doesn’t trigger the nostalgia and technical awe factors (“wow they did all this in assembly in a 4-MHz IBM PC while these days word or google docs bring a fast modern pc to its knees”).
on “You can legally get and run WordPerfect for free” ↗If you're up for a read about how WordPerfect got started and rose to fame, Almost Perfect isn't a bad read. They battle Microsoft, OS/2 is mentioned a lot, lots of fun stuff. http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
on “WordPerfect for UNIX (1992)” ↗“Large” companies like Lotus, WordPerfect and Ashton-Tate were founded years after Microsoft, came to dominate their niches, and were thoroughly crushed when Microsoft expanded into those niches. This is a great read about the rise and fall of WordPerfect. http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
on “Ask HN: What are examples of startups that died by the hands of Big Tech?” ↗"The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits" http://grantland.com/features/the-rise-of-nintendo-video-gam... Also a book on the history of Word Perfect showing how a software company was run in the 80s http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
on “Ask HN: Best longform articles you've read in 2014” ↗The part about it being impossible to deride anything labelled 'dynamic' reminded me of the story about naming WordPerfect in the "Almost Perfect" book[1]: > Despite its initial unpopularity, the name proved to be a good one. It was so positive sounding that it made any criticism sound untrue. It was like naming a soap, "Makes You Look Younger," so the competition would have to say something like
on “Dynamic Programming: The Name (1984)” ↗I loved Wordperfect but they completely fumbled the transition to Windows. "Almost Perfect"[1] outlines their many missteps from the inside, and it's hard in retrospect to put too much blame on Microsoft for it--at most maybe for some market confusion over whether OS/2 was really the future or not. [1]: http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml
on “Microsoft Has It All—Almost (1985)” ↗"Almost Perfect" by W. E. Peterson, the story of the rise and fall of WordPerfect Corporation http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
on “Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?” ↗We can't have a discussion about the history of WordPerfect without mentioning this book: https://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml
on “KKR has acquired Corel, reportedly for $1B” ↗Not game-related, but "Almost Perfect", the story of WordPerfect the company. https://www.wordplace.com/ap/ As well as "The Perfect Store", the story of eBay
on “Ask HN: What are more books like “Masters of Doom” or “Showstoppers”?” ↗A story about WordPerfect from an insider executive https://www.wordplace.com/ap/
on “I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something” ↗Almost Perfect by WE Pete Peterson [0] is the story of WordPerfect and how it burned up. I think it was a good example of 80s/90s software startups and think the author, CEO I think, was frank about what went wrong. And it’s free. [0] http://www.wordplace.com/ap/
on “Let there be more biographies of failures” ↗"Sweating Bullets", "Almost Perfect" (http://www.wordplace.com/ap/), "The Autodesk File" (https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/e5/) and "Show Stopper!" were a few books that I think pair very well, and as a developer who wasn't around in the time really gave interesting and comparable insights into the development of a few really important companies and pieces of software.
on “Dennis Austin, the software developer of PowerPoint, dies at 76” ↗If asked, I often name WordPerfect 4.2 as the best software I ever used. And that it was written in assembly is incredible. The book Almost Perfect [1] details those early times at WordPerfect. Incidentally, amongst the other best software I'd be tempted by Lotus 123, DataEase 4.53, Turbo Pascal 3, and Elite (BBC). [1] http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml
on “L123: A Lotus 1-2-3–style terminal spreadsheet with modern Excel compatibility” ↗Straight from one of the horse's mouths: http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ap_0intro.shtml
on “What Happened to WordPerfect? Why the Dominant Word Processor Disappeared” ↗