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Game of Thrones Author George R R Martin Writes with WordStar on DOS

Posted by Soulskill on from the change-is-scary dept.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Ryan Reed reports that when most Game of Thrones fans imagine George R.R. Martin writing his epic fantasy novels, they probably picture the author working on a futuristic desktop (or possibly carving his words onto massive stones like the Ten Commandments). But the truth is that Martin works on an outdated DOS machine using '80s word processor WordStar 4.0, as he revealed during an interview on Conan. 'I actually like it,' says Martin. 'It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.' 'I actually have two computers,' Martin continued. 'I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet.'"

7 of 522 comments (clear)

  1. Amen, brother Amen! by Qbertino · · Score: 5, Insightful

    'It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.'

    Amen, brother, Amen!

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:Amen, brother Amen! by AaronLS · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hallelujah! Trying to select text and it grabs the whole word, or worse, some programs grab the whole word plus a space. Why do I want trailing spaces with everything I paste?

      As a developer thinking about how I can "help" the user, I always favor the perspective that the user knows what they want.

      Some developers make the "they can disable this feature" excuse. The frustrating thing is every time you get a new desktop/phone/upgrade/update you find yourself disabling the same options again and again. Only a small handful of products remember these kinds of settings across devices/installs.

    2. Re:Amen, brother Amen! by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is because, as a developer, you're a user who understands and knows what you want. Microsoft is writing software for the kind of people who'd type google into the google search bar to get to google.

  2. The Good Old Days! by cogeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I still remember WordPerfect 5.1 running on DOS, once you had all the shortcut keys memorized, was lightning fast and did just what it was supposed to. I get so pissed off clicking on the little blue lightning bolt every 5 seconds to undo something Microsoft thought it was helping me "fix."

    1. Re:The Good Old Days! by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I still miss Reveal Codes.

  3. Re:If it ain't broke, don't fix it by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "WordStar is notably lacking in support for extended characters of any sort."

    Like Slashdot 25 years later?

  4. Re:Why do people still pay money for basic softwar by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Compatibility: we want our documents to look same if we hand them to somebody else. It's not easy to match MS-Word's layout engine bug-for-bug in another product.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.