Thread by @geoffreylitt

In the early 90s, there was a lot of hype about "component-based software" -- editing different parts of a document with different mini-editors.

Why didn't it catch on? 7 theories I've come across:

1) UX quality. If every component is developed by an independent company, who is responsible for unifying it into a nice holistic experience rather than a mishmash?

2) Modality. Different parts of your document operate with different behaviors. How does the user keep track?

(source: Humane Interface by Raskin)

3) Performance. Huge memory overhead from the complexity. The absolute numbers look laughably tiny today, but memory usage is still a real concern in modern computing -- cough electron

(source: wikipedia)

4) Exporting. Hard to export a "whole document" into a different format if it's made of a bunch of different parts.

Reminds me of how a Notion doc "export" into any format isn't really complete if it embeds content from Figma or other services

5) Lack of broad utility. How common are "compound documents" really? Beyond the classic example of "word doc with images and videos embedded"

(Given the prevalence of dynamic web content today, I think this one feels off base)

6) Data format compatibility. If two components both edit spreadsheets but use different data formats, what do you do?

7) Historical accident. Turf wars between Microsoft and everyone else, Steve Jobs ruthlessly prioritizing at Apple, execution failures, etc.

Who knows the relative truth / importance of these theories... If you have more please share!

Also, the context has changed a ton. If we try again in modern era things will certainly work out differently, for better or worse. Still, good to understand the challenges as much as possible

For a bit more background on opendoc:

https://twitter.com/geoffreylitt/status/1355255162626068482