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by orf 3061 days ago
> but maybe students accustomed to LibreOffice can push the change

But... why? For 99.9% of students Word is all they need. There are not many compelling reasons to not teach the software people will actually use in the real world.

I mean, why not eschew the English language in schools and teach kids Swahili? Maybe students accustomed to Swahili can push the change. Or maybe not.
3 comments
thibaultamartin 3061 days ago
> But... why? For 99.9% of students Word is all they need.

MS Office is especially better than LibreOffice with Excel and PowerPoint. If all you use is Word, then the licence you have to pay to use it might not be worth the difference with Writer.

> There are not many compelling reasons to not teach the software people will actually use in the real world.

Well, I do use MS Office in "the real world", and LibreOffice at home. When I landed in my company, we got a mandatory session of "advanced" Excel and Powerpoint usage, because that's inexpensive for the company to spend a day or two to make sure we can use the tools adequately rather than betting high school taught us.

Not everyone uses MS Office in "the real world", nor in "the business world". Most of the document we receive and send is in PDF format.

> I mean, why not eschew the English language in schools and teach kids Swahili? Maybe students accustomed to Swahili can push the change. Or maybe not.

Come on, I'm quite positive we can both be smarter than that :)

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michaelmrose 3061 days ago
Are you really equating learning an entire language to learning the basics of an office suite?

Most people use extremely basic functionality. They can probably learn a slightly different UI in an hour of experimentation.

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saint_fiasco 3061 days ago
Well, for 99.8% of the world, Writer is as good as Word. And it's 100% cheaper.
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criddell 3061 days ago
Sure, but Word is cheap enough. Writer has to be better than Word to win because price really isn't an issue.
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saint_fiasco 3061 days ago
It doesn't have to be better, it just has to be the same. For most people, they pretty much are the same.

Ideally they would switch around every few months, so they can raise users who actually know the general principles behind their tools and don't get completely lost by minor interface changes.

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criddell 3061 days ago
> It doesn't have to be better, it just has to be the same.

I think you underestimate just how powerful good enough is in terms of inertia.

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