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Comment by brudgers

7 days ago

I appreciate the idea.

But I would advise any and every student against risking their academic work product on a small webservice because the long term economic viability of such services tends to be low.

So the risk of all a student's work disappearing overnight far outweighs the benefits because the tool is not going to cut a five year program into six months. Good luck.

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brudgers

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pjdesno  7 days ago

There’s a latex editor for the Mac with real-time typesetting (I forget the name) that I used very early on for fairly high-value paper submissions. (not my dissertation - that’s long in the past)

I trusted it because (a) I had a downloaded copy of the app on my machine, and (b) I had the latex files locally, and could go back to emacs if necessary. For the short term, at least, I was insulated from failure of the company.

spankalee  7 days ago

This is an argument against any new software for students.

  • dickiedyce  7 days ago

    No, this is an argument against any new online-only software for students where your work is being stored in a cloud, and not in an open format locally on hard drives.

    • superxpro12  7 days ago

      Yeah, i mean, any general backup policy for mission-critical work applies here. 3-2-1 rule, etc. Keeping only 1 copy of something, even on the cloud, is a recipe for disaster. Just ask South Korea how that went for them today.

  • brudgers  7 days ago

    My comment expresses my opinion about the specific risks for graduate students considering the likelihood of economic viability of the idea.

    The risk is a catastrophic event that might derail an academic career beyond recovery.

    The economic viability assessment is based on the normal costs of doing all the things a company needs to do to stay in business relative to the unit economics, the size of the market, and the availability of alternatives with established track records.

    If this was a product targeted at freshman students my take would be different. The stakes are much much lower for users; the market is much much bigger; and the norms of academic practice are far more fluid.

    Grad school is not simply an extended undergrad…at least when theses and dissertations are required. People expect undergraduates to screw up. Part of graduate school is the expectation of maturity.