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Why Enterprise Software Sucks

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Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#551

Post by scarface74 »

amaccuish wrote: post #546
scarface74 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds worse than modern ActiveSync - which Apple introduces support for in 2010 (2009?). You also didn’t have to send all of your email through BlackBerry’s servers. With ActiveSync, my email will usually reach my phone/cellular watch/iPad before it reaches my computer.

True. The messages were encrypted, but ye if RIM went down, no email for you. Even if your email server was working fine.

Well, it being encrypted doesn’t help when RIM had the encryption keys and would give them up to any government entity.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/blackberry_gi...

https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/18/blackberry-ceo-wont-say-...

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#552

Post by bonoboTP »

40four wrote: post #505
bonoboTP wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do this because it drives more engagement than tweeting a blog post link.

Yeah you're right. It's just been driving me crazy for a while now. It just feels so clunky. It feels very self-gratifying. Part of my point is you typically only see this from folks who have a large amount of followers. Of which, a good percentage would be happy to click on a link to writing from someone they're ibterested in. Seems like they are doing it because they enjoy the reaction from their follower base on t…

> Part of my point is you typically only see this from folks who have a large amount of followers.

I think that's reversed. They gathered a following by posting this way.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#553

Post by chii »

robocat wrote: post #359
lmm wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the time the client would be better off buying actual custom software. It's very easy to end up with a SAP (say) "configuration" so complex that you'll spend more on maintenance than you would if it were a standalone program.

> A lot of the time the client would be better off buying actual custom software. I agree in theory, but I thoroughly disagree in practice. If a client could spec/develop good software and cost it realistically, then sure. But I have rarely had clients like that - instead they think the problem-space is simple and end up with a half-baked solution that can't be maintained. Developing greenfield software is a high ris…

The pretence that there's cost savings, followed by the sunk cost fallacy.

This happens because management is doing cover-your-ass methodology of software procurement. If they backed a greenfield development and it failed, then get blamed. But if they choose SAP/salesforce/bigCo, the same failure can be blamed on the vendor, or if it ran over budget, they can claim the vendor is expensive.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#554

Post by Khaine »

Enterprise software sucks because the people who develop it do not understand the underlying business processes they are trying to support, and business people who understand the processes do not understand how software can interact with that process.

This leads to things like software being bent to support an existing (shitty) process, rather then redesigning the business process to effectively integrate software effectively to automate the process.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#555

Post by com »

hinkley wrote: post #506
ridaj wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this does completely get it right. Enterprises thought they needed all the control and security features of Blackberry until the iPhone came along and made the UX gap unsustainable. Enterprises thought they needed on-premise hosting of Exchange, Office and SharePoint instances under their control for email and productivity, until GSuite came up with a better, less configurable user experience based on consumer fe…

There’s supposedly an axiom for salesforce that it’s easier to be successful with salesforce if you adapt your business practices to match salesforce instead of the other way around.

Same with SAP.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#556

Post by amaccuish »

scarface74 wrote: post #551
amaccuish wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. The messages were encrypted, but ye if RIM went down, no email for you. Even if your email server was working fine.

Well, it being encrypted doesn’t help when RIM had the encryption keys and would give them up to any government entity. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/blackberry_gi... https://www.engadget.com/2016/04/18/blackberry-ceo-wont-say-...

So that applied to consumer users. When connecting via BES, the connection was end to end encrypted, RIM never had the keys.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#557

Post by MertsA »

mbreese wrote: post #423
TeMPOraL wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just give me ISO8601 dates, please; HackerNews, you, too! Strongly seconding. It's an annoying UX antipattern, especially as it loses precision over time ("28 minutes ago" is fine, but "yesterday" or "5 days ago" or - even worse - "2 years ago" is not; having the date specified to hours or minutes is actually useful, especially in context of a site with international audience). Doubly so on HN, which doesn't even b…

I prefer the HN method of 28 min, yesterday, 2 hours ago, etc... for HN. The older a comment or post, the less relevant it is to a particular discussion. This site is for real-time discussions of articles, so it is optimized for that use-case. The older a comment, the less relevant it is towards the immediate discussion. Thus, older comments have less precision, because those details don't matter for the discussion.…

They could easily do it the Reddit way and still provide a timestamp but keep the simplicity and relative time format. Just have it pop up the timestamp on mouse hover. That's still very simple and can be effectively done using just CSS.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#558

Post by cnst »

MertsA wrote: post #557
mbreese wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the HN method of 28 min, yesterday, 2 hours ago, etc... for HN. The older a comment or post, the less relevant it is to a particular discussion. This site is for real-time discussions of articles, so it is optimized for that use-case. The older a comment, the less relevant it is towards the immediate discussion. Thus, older comments have less precision, because those details don't matter for the discussion.…

They could easily do it the Reddit way and still provide a timestamp but keep the simplicity and relative time format. Just have it pop up the timestamp on mouse hover. That's still very simple and can be effectively done using just CSS.

You don't even need any CSS for that — the title attribute alone would be sufficient.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#559

Post by cnst »

flarg wrote: post #439
cnst wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to be clear, this has nothing to do with "classroom". The problem is people design these things without any sort of actual testing in actual conditions where the software is supposed to be used. Displaying 5 results per page is a bug, not a feature. Having restrictions on filetypes is a bug, not a feature. The same could go on to the rest of their "features". (My biggest pet peeve is date formatting — just give…

I'd disagree a little, the problem is not testing, it's building the software in the first place when it doesn't solve a real problem.

This so much.

Sadly, what you describe as the anti-pattern is actually the industry standard.

And you don't have to go far to see examples — Slashdot and Reddit redesign come to mind. Both are unusable.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#560

Post by cnst »

MarcScott wrote: post #419
shinjitsu wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having restrictions on filetypes is a bug, not a feature. It should be - but for many school IT security types it really is a feature to limit file types

I fought this during my entire teaching career. Blocking file types by extension is pointless. as you can just change the file type. If you're worried about kids being able to run arbitrary python scripts on your network, then the security problem is not the kids, it's your shitty network. People are given cash as bug bounties for finding security flaws in systems, but in schools they are punished!

I think it's also a problem when people are rewarded for finding these kinds of bugs that are not actual bugs.

Some bad person vandalised an obscure public Oracle repository on GitHub that's not even for any public product they're known for (OpenGrok). Instead of being banned, the owners restricted public edits. WTF? It's small things like this that end up being having the anti-pattern become the norm.

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