What is Bending Spoons doing differently?

[kkarasu 7]

Hi folks.

Since acquisition, a lot seems to be happening at Evernote in terms of updates. Yes, before BS, features auch as backlinks and tasks were introduced but I never had been able to use Evernote on my Android phone for instance. It just didn't work. And the desktop app was slow. Development seemed to be slow in general (talking as someone who has no idea about software development). 

So I am genuinely curious what BS is doing differently in terms of software development that things seem starting to improve. And why were the original owners not able to do that? You know BS is talking about cleaning code and such. So did the original owners started with a bad code for version 10 to begin with? 

Any software developers here who might have a clue? I am really interested.

Thanks in advance!

[Boot17 1,467]

I think Bending Spoons has continued on the same trajectory that the original team was already heading.

The original team was dealing with a ton of technical debt from dealing with five separate code bases and it was hard to make any forward progression so they did this v10 overhaul/rewrite to survive as a product and company.

v10 has been constantly improving since it's inception 3 years ago and was working pretty great for me even before Bending Spoons took the helm. (Windows Desktop, MacOS Desktop, iPad, iPhone, Web -- but no Android)

In the last few years and under the old management, Evernote did its biggest major overhaul and update of the client apps in Evernote history. Then they added Tasks, Home, Calendar integration, Backlinks, Checklists and more. The multi-sync edit and infrastructure upgrade was already in beta before the acquisition by Bending Spoons. Evernote had just gotten their feet under them cleaning up all the technical debt left over from Version 10 and were really starting to roll. Updates once or twice a month with bug fixes and new minor, and sometimes, major releases...

Is BS more focused on cleaning up technical debt and getting a better stable base? Perhaps so based on blog posts and such -- but it's not known if the original team would have done the same once the RTE rollout was complete.

Don't forget that bending Spoons has had a few missteps since then too (similar to the previous team, I'm sure) -- a few releases have been severely bugged and forum members were clamoring for them to rollback to the previous release.

So I think what you are seeing now isn't only because of the focus that Bending Spoons has done, it is because of all the work that was done in the last couple of years before and the course that was set.

[gazumped 11,699]

I do think that one difference is that senior people at Bending Spoons are active users of the app,  and this is now 'their' money.  Previously as a startup with lots of backers I'd imagine big decisions were taken in a big room with lots of conflicting inputs.  Now I get the impression that there are a lot of business-oriented people trying their best to make this whole thing work.  There's a concentration and a drive behind what they're doing that I haven't seen before.  I rather like it.

Plus as new owners,  BS have brought in a new 'eye' - after years of operation there must have been techs who did things in a particular way because they'd 'always' done ot that way.  The new guys will have asked a lot of 'why' questions and probably changed a lot of processes - hopefully for the good.  We'll find out...