I don't personally know any people who believe that hard work and talent have zero positive correlation with success. However I know many people who believe that parents' socioeconomic status, genetics, luck, birthplace, and lack of scruples are all much more significant factors.
I choose to actively reject that mindset because doing so motivates me to focus on elements within my control, but if I'm being honest I think they are probably correct, at least from a statistical perspective.
I agree that design (rather than functionality) holds Calc back, but chalking it up to personal preference may prevent the Libre Office team from increasing their user base.
Like others, I am having trouble putting my finger on the reason, the best I can do is to say that in Calc my attention was often on the software itself rather than the data. To use Heideggerian terminology, Calc often feels "present-at-hand" whereas with some experience other spreadsheet tools feel "ready-to-hand".
I initially assumed I simply had more experience with Excel and would find Calc just as easy if I spent more time with it. But then I tried Google Sheets and to a lesser extent Apple Numbers and was able to quickly transition from thinking about the tool (present-at-hand) to thinking about my content and tasks (ready-to-hand).
I still have to drop out of my task flow when using an unfamiliar feature in Excel, Sheets, or Numbers but these feel like momentary digressions with the majority of my time spent thinking about the content. With Calc the ratio felt reversed, with the most of my time spent thinking about the tool. (Though I'll admit I have not tried it in several years -- perhaps it has improved since then.)
I wish I could provide more actionable feedback, but I suspect that the best way to pay down some of their design debt would be for Libre Office to conduct usability tests.
I agree that quantitative metrics would make for a much stronger comparison than a few people's subjective experience using both kinds of devices.
In absence of that, even an anecdotal comparison seems more relevant than a statement that only considers one of the two items being compared.
Update: Because I was curious whether my subjective experience was backed by real numbers, I looked up the top few Android and iPhones with the greatest battery life as per the first website I found [1] and calculated their efficiency based on their battery capacity. Various iPhone 13 models used 3.1 to 3.6 mAh per minute whereas the Android phones used 4.0 mAh/min (Moto G9 Power), 4.2 mAh/min (Samsung Galaxy A03s, Realme 9 Pro), 4.3 mAh/min (Nokia G21).
This mirrors my experience, but it does not invalidate the parent's statement.
Specifically: While iPhones are noticeably more power efficient than Android phones the latter have been sufficient for my usecases especially given that there are typically options with larger batteries.
Interesting, I came away with the impression that the author was implying that some of these changes (i.e. better understanding of toxicity, therapy, wage gaps, redlining, gerrymandering) to be positive changes to provide more nuance in their post than just a list of raw nostalgia.
It makes sense that fifteen minutes a day of Duolingo isn't as effective as spending two hours a day studying, going to meetups, traveling to a foreign country, etc.
I recall similar criticism for the "seven-minute workout" from people who pointed out that joining a gym and hiring a personal trainer is a more effective way of getting in shape.
But those are not very helpful. If I have fifteen minutes before the kids wake up my only decision is how to spend that time. Duolingo? Meditate? Pushups? Half an episode of something? Daydream?
As someone who has used Duolingo and spaced repetition apps for ~10m/day for the last four or five years, is there something specific you recommend transitioning to?
I've started with some Netflix and podcasts, but they're a little more awkward in 10m chunks.
The goal makes sense but our current DST implementation of a sixty-minute jump twice a year seems unnecessarily large and disruptive. (And not just dealing with kids -- traffic accidents and heart attacks spike after.) Whereas if there was a way to coordinate a daily shift it would be less than a minute.
It reminds me of when I'm camping. I usually fall into a dawn-based time system: Wake up around ~dawn, eat breakfast ~d+2h, lunch ~d+6h, dinner ~d+12h, bed down ~d+16h. You maximize daylight this way but the main problem is that you end up drifting relative to everyone else and if you want to rely on a standard watch to keep your schedule it requires some mental math.
I'd love to figure out how to use a combination of dawn-based time system for my daily routines plus UTC for remote collaboration.
This. Coordinating a mass schedule change is just an alternate implementation of a time shift.
The primary benefit of mass schedule change is that it might make (some) programmers' lives easier. The disadvantage is that it makes everyone else's lives harder as they adapt to schedule shifts.
(Clocks exist to serve people, people don't exist to serve clocks.)
I choose to actively reject that mindset because doing so motivates me to focus on elements within my control, but if I'm being honest I think they are probably correct, at least from a statistical perspective.