Software horror show: SAP Concur • Hacker News Board

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#111

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #108

themoonisachees wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a sysadmin i often get dealt the worst part of programs. I get thrown for the update stuff but never actually use the programs so i never get to say "well it's a pain tp update but a joy to use". When i was sysadmin in a small firm, updating SAP components was always the single most furstrating experience, and we ran Matlab. As someone who has a degree in CS who had to go through "enterprise programming" courses,…

I greatly enjoy my Tesla every time I drive it. I have never enjoyed using SAP or Oracle products.

What are doing in SAP? Supply Chain, Production, Finance? I pitty you if it is logistics...

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#112

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

deadpannini wrote: post #110

hbarka wrote: post #52

I don’t understand the disdain here in Hacker News for enterprise software. Every now and then this type of post would show up, decrying how terrible the user interface is or how awful looking the fonts are and how they can program the same functions in 1000 lines of code and support thousands of users. These companies have revenue in the billions. They have enabled large companies, since before many of us were born.…

What you say is true, but these companies aren't successful because their products are usable. They succeeded because of their first-mover advantage, lack of alternatives, and compliance requirements that raise the cost of competition. We don't owe them any respect when it comes to UX. I can see how it gets tiresome reading repetitive arguments, but a solid theory undergirds all the criticism: that one way to beat SA…

Nefore better UI and UX help you beat SAP and co, you need compliant, and industry specific ERP functions on par with them. And then you need to sway all those existing customers away from them. In market that doesn't value UI half as much as you seem to think.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#113

Post by PaulAJ » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

SAP has a very clear idea of how it makes money. It makes money by selling to senior managers who don't have to use it, and have very little idea of the realities for people on the front line. So SAP have no incentive to produce a system that is useable, because that won't increase their sales. Their sales are increased by clever salespeople, so that is where the money goes.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#114

Post by deely3 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

sidcool wrote: post #34

I think it's a bit fashionable here at HN to lambast enterprise software (and companies). I myself find a guilty pleasure in doing so. We like to call them incompetent. But these companies do something right. If not software then in sales or marketing.

Most people that criticizes SAP and other enterprise software miss the point that SAP and enterprise software is complex. Not because it made complex but because this area/domain is really complex. Finances are complex, role based access control are complex, ORM is complex. Now combine all these things and add different implementation in different countries/regions and you will probably understand why SAP is de-facto standard.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#115

Post by realworldperson » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

dig1 wrote: post #69

hbarka wrote: post #52

I don’t understand the disdain here in Hacker News for enterprise software. Every now and then this type of post would show up, decrying how terrible the user interface is or how awful looking the fonts are and how they can program the same functions in 1000 lines of code and support thousands of users. These companies have revenue in the billions. They have enabled large companies, since before many of us were born.…

I think it is a superiority complex. SAP, IBM, Oracle (and many small companies running for ages) are all making "shitty" products, yet, every year, their revenue is in billions. On the other hand, we have "beautifully hand-crafted products with love" made in the best languages human can invent (your favorite language only HN crowd dicking around), and those companies are barely paying their developers and bills. But…

[dead]

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#116

Post by deadpannini » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #112

deadpannini wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is true, but these companies aren't successful because their products are usable. They succeeded because of their first-mover advantage, lack of alternatives, and compliance requirements that raise the cost of competition. We don't owe them any respect when it comes to UX. I can see how it gets tiresome reading repetitive arguments, but a solid theory undergirds all the criticism: that one way to beat SA…

Nefore better UI and UX help you beat SAP and co, you need compliant, and industry specific ERP functions on par with them. And then you need to sway all those existing customers away from them. In market that doesn't value UI half as much as you seem to think.

I agree that the enterprise market does not value usability very much, and I would even agree that the enterprise vendors made the right choice to deliver anything at all, in the early stages of ERP (even the first two decades).

None of that means the software is good: we can recognize the smart business choices those companies made and also abhor their products.

They provide what Alan Cooper calls "Dancing bearware" - it doesn't matter how badly the bear dances, they're just grateful to have a bear that can do it at all.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#117

Post by jmclnx » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

irusensei wrote: post #20

My personal experience so far is that the whole SAP ecosystem is a great way for incompetent people to print money. I’ve worked for companies that ran SAP and paid obscene amounts of money for SAP consultant and developers to write terrible code using their proprietary language. We had this issue with a certain report that was outputting weird values. Company had to pay the partner for support. I’ve skimmed over the…

I see this all the time, and on our UN*X servers, everything remotely related to SAP is 777, even text files. Not matter how many times I tell them not to do that, it happens anyway.

Good help the company if someone every gets access to the SAP servers.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#118

Post by Bouncingsoul1 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

vulcanash999 wrote: post #107

irusensei wrote: post #20

My personal experience so far is that the whole SAP ecosystem is a great way for incompetent people to print money. I’ve worked for companies that ran SAP and paid obscene amounts of money for SAP consultant and developers to write terrible code using their proprietary language. We had this issue with a certain report that was outputting weird values. Company had to pay the partner for support. I’ve skimmed over the…

> I’ve skimmed over the code and it was processing hardcoded index positions. I repeat the person who did that had no concept of a loop. Since the query was returning more than 250 results the remaining rows were being ignored. Unrelated, but this reminds me of a time when I had to write some code in some proprietery programming language in some industrial automation project to program a PLC. The language was similar…

That's odd most of these PLC are programmable with IEC 61131-3 languages,e.g. Structured Text which has For-loops. That said i did my fair share of metaprogramming as these usually lack dynamic allocation.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#119

Post by QuadmasterXLII » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

neuronic wrote: post #97

dig1 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a superiority complex. SAP, IBM, Oracle (and many small companies running for ages) are all making "shitty" products, yet, every year, their revenue is in billions. On the other hand, we have "beautifully hand-crafted products with love" made in the best languages human can invent (your favorite language only HN crowd dicking around), and those companies are barely paying their developers and bills. But…

Did you really have to add a jab at vegan food and renewable energy in there and somehow make this about politics? Where is this weird (and frankly suspicious) hostility against either of those even rationally coming from? No need to act as if "crazy HN hipster developers" (apparently your perspective) are the only ones who don't understand that there is a very good reason why SAP is still used at Apple and Google.

The connecting thread through veganism, climate change, and enterprise software is that you can accrue significant personal benefits by causing suffering elsewhere, and you will never have to face consequences for that suffering. In fact, anyone who even shows you that suffering is a hippie bastard

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#120

Post by douglee650 » Sat, Jan 07, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #71

robertlagrant wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar thing with people who think snow is white. Joseph Stalin also thought that, and he killed 50 million people!

Come again?

It's an allegory OP is making to express their disdain for anecdotal correlation, illustrated here by the absurdity in which the story of a solution architect making a mistake based on a single case, is itself an anecdotal correlation …the purpose of which is perceived to paint an entire class of people (solution architects) as reactively decisive with incomplete information.