I recently converted my dynamic DB-driven blog to a static website. I did not predict how badly the added latency between having an idea, writing down the first flawed paragraph, saving a draft, reading what I wrote, then revising and publishing would reduce my writing output. Sure, I can write in Google Docs, but because it's not on my site one click away from being "out there" I am far less compelled to write down my fleeting ideas. Over time I have learned that fleeting ideas are the best ones because they exist at the limit of your understanding. Maybe if you help set up his blog, he'll be more likely to write?
I had the opposite feeling. I wrote my PhD thesis in 1998-2000 and the editor of choice at the time was Word.
It was a pain to deal with the formatting, spacing, page breaking and other -ings.
I then tried LaTeX and all problems vanished. Since I could not influence the output (at least without a lot of work) I simply gave up and started to "code my text". It was way faster than admiring my artful working all the time, I just complied the text from time to time and I was done.
Markdown is a must. I used it on dynamic blog and on my static site, but I paid less attention to my writing when posts were not "live".
I believe that Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle concept of minimising the time between having an idea and seeing a change universally applies to every user kind of interface.
His buddy isn't being blocked by a clunky workflow, though. His friend has trouble starting because he can't see his writing in a font that he likes.
I'd suggest that the friend write his first post in Word or somesuch with a font that he likes. Then, when he has a good first post, export it to the blog.
I completely agree. I spent quite awhile setting up a Hugo powered blog, getting my theme just right, getting GitHub pages with CloudFlare for SSL working. And then...nothing. Because there's just too much friction.
I'm going to move to WordPress and be done with it. No I won't have faster than lightning page loads anymore, but it'll be much lower friction to publish something.
