(2019-08-03) Mod Fast Software The Best Software

Craig Mod: Fast Software, the Best Software. Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused. Like a good tool, it often means that it’s simple, but that’s not necessarily true. Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called upon with great reluctance.

One of my most used, most speedy pieces of software is nvALT.

I write mainly in Ulysses.

nvALT syncs with Simplenote. This is handy because nvALT is macOS only. So you can use the Simplenote iOS app to keep your extra brain nearby on the go. Simplenote also has a macOS app. You may think: Why not use the Simplenote desktop application? Because — it’s not quite as fast.

Ulysses has slowed down on a number of occasions.

The slowness is like an off smell.

Speed and reliability are often intuited hand-in-hand.

As a counter example, Sublime Text never slows down for me. I can throw a 50,000 line file at it and it zips along. You may wonder why I don’t write in Sublime Text (as I sometimes wonder). And the answer is: It’s just not quite nice enough for full composition.

Sublime Text is optimized for code, not words.

Sublime Text has — in my experience — only gotten faster. I love software that does this

Adobe Lightroom does not feel like a fast, focused tool. Nor does Photoshop. At one point, they did. It’s why I chose them.

One could argue that design apps like Sketch have grown in popularity because of speed.

Figma is another design tool in the vein of Sketch or Illustrator. In spite of being browser based, Figma is so fast that I laugh from delight whenever I use it

Google Maps is dying a tragic, public death by a thousand cuts of slowness.

Apple Maps in contrast, today, is downright zippy and responsive. The data still isn’t as good as Google Maps, but this a good example of where slowness pushed me to reinstall an app I had all but written off.

For the absolute nadir of software clunkery, see exhibit a) iTunes

Fast software gives the user a chance to “meld” with its toolset. That is, not break flow.

let’s end with an example of a piece of iOS software that is pure craft: Things.