For clarification sake I suspect nobody is talking about a stand alone, run-on-the-mobile-OS, never to communicate via internet application. Idk for sure (wasn’t worth the investigation), but I’m betting their “app” is just shorthand for a web service that looks like a stand alone app through the UI.
But regardless of the architectural nature of their (Shadow Inc’s) product it’s worth noting that high performing, mission critical software is challenging to do correctly. That is to say doing it with feasible, adequate solutions for security, availability, performance, testing, and usability from the end users and administrators perspectives is a whole world of responsibility for an engineering team, even if the objective seems trivial in casual conversation.
People like to characterize software projects as “easy” and almost never know the scope of what they’re talking about. Idk anything about Shadow. But judging by their lack of effective consulting on this project, and consequently allowing such a terrible product to be released, they are bad at what they do. This whole incident should go down as a lesson to folks to not screw around with silly budgets, inexperienced teams, and unrealistic timelines when looking for quality software. That the DNC or whoever doesn’t know any better is a sign of the complete cultural ignorance that otherwise functional adults in this world have about the seriousness of software as any solution to any real-world problem. Everyone is a failure in this case: Shadow, the DNC, even the commenters still misunderstanding things on this thread.