From my "corporate" experience, I've seen most programmers (even highly experienced ones) go for the "quick and dirty" programming over the "clean and right" programming. Deadlines can be one reason, but more often than not, the programmer is disconnected from the software. He's just being told what the user wants and he gives it to them, not necessarily with coherence.Why don't we see more well-written software?
This is why it takes 8 steps to do something that should instead take 2-3. Why does the programmer care? He doesn't use the app all day in an office. But when the assistant has to repeat that same action 200 times a day (x8 =1600), he's being slowed down by the app, and is losing productivity. If it were programmed "clean and right," that same sequence would instead require one-third of the time it takes to do it the "quick and dirty" way.
I think where you see this even more often is in the application framework, or user interface of apps today. Menus are not thought out, shortcuts and navigational keys are changed for no good reason (in English, CTRL+F is pretty much established as 'Find' so don't use it for fonts or formatting, etc.). The current OpenOffice user interface suffers from this ailment. And while several professional software designers have made presentations on how to improve it, they're scoffed at and ignored.
TextPad gives you a clean interface with many built-in shortcuts. Peter nailed it: "Helios got it right a long time ago, and has been incrementally and subtly refining the state of the art ever since." Ian Mead at UltraEdit could learn a few things from the Helios crowd (and vice-versa), but like most, he's content to ignore the minor shortcomings of his program's interface in favor of cluttered menus, awkward toolbar management, and letting the "small things" go. Maybe it's hubris. But if I were a programmer, heck, I would borrow the best from other programs and incorporate them into mine! Microsoft was once good at that, and then with Office97, they just stopped and went for feature-bloat.
I believe TextPad has the finest text editor on the market, but could use some major and some minor improvements (what app couldn't?). What TextPad has that no one else does in this market is a fiercely loyal user base that is more than willing to contribute ideas, add-ons, and solutions for it. Helios should take note and try to be more responsive, since if you let us help, we are more than willing to.
