3 ms·

Isn't it a bit ironic that Lotus Notes is given as an example to good software? I haven't met someone who doesn't hate it.

by hcho 19y ago

run4yourlives 19y ago
Yeah, I usually love Joel's articles, but he lost me after that paragraph. Lotus notes is garbage software.
spolsky 19y ago
I think selling 55,000,000 copies of a software package (around $500 each I think) qualifies as at least one type of success, probably the kind of success that people around here wouldn't mind to have with their own products.
ilamont 19y ago
Hear hear. The Notes adoption curve he points to can be explained by other factors -- marketing, bundling, competition (or lack of it), etc.
- spolsky 19y ago
  ok, let's hear your explanation then. Notes was pretty advanced for its day and big companies bought it because it actually did what it was supposed to do.
  - ekanes 19y ago
    I think the issue is you're mixing the fact that the company/software was commercially successful with whether or not it was great software.
gruseom 19y ago
I haven't met someone who doesn't hate it. I certainly have. And it led me to a little theory: that Lotus Notes' value was in enabling non-programmers to build a certain class of apps. If this is correct, then its value was pretty big (think of spreadsheets). It also explains why programmers hate Lotus Notes so much; systems built this way get messy very quickly (again, think of spreadsheets). But to dismiss the value to users is missing something big and important. In other words, this dispute about "is Lotus Notes good software or garbage" is beside the point, because it's based on two different definitions of "good software". Software that helps users get things done that they can't easily otherwise do is certainly good by their definition even if it's the greatest garbagey kludge ever known. (But I never used Lotus Notes, or even, as far as I know, touched a computer that had it installed... this is just based on stuff I've been told.)
- wallflower 19y ago
  I read an interview with an IBM technical guy once who claimed that Lotus Notes was first and foremost a synchronization platform (desktop and server) and email was just kind of built on top of that..
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    Well synchronization is still a big pain (Exchange server, anyone?) so if that's the problem they solved, then they deserved success.
    - wallflower 19y ago
      "The product was very far ahead of its time. It was the first commercial client/server product." "During this time, the developers at Iris used Lotus Notes to communicate remotely with people at Lotus. Halvorsen said, "Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality." For example, the developers needed to synchronize data between the two different locations, so they invented replication. "This wasn't in the original plan, but the problem arose and we solved it," said Halvorsen." From IBM's "The History of Notes and Domino" http://tinyurl.com/2b8wxk http://tinyurl.com/2b8wxk "Inside Notes provides a single place where you can quickly learn about the architecture of Notes" http://tinyurl.com/ytjkf3 http://tinyurl.com/ytjkf3 [PDF] Note: I love how IBM's web site uses the famed Notes Icon as it's little Website icon identifier :)
      - gruseom 19y ago
        This is significant: Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality. The feedback loop of eating your own dog food is one of the greatest benefits a software project can have. Here the programmers weren't only users of the product, they were using it as an essential part of the development work itself. That's like putting steroids into your dog food and then eating it.
  - nradov 19y ago
    I use IBM Lotus Domino server software (Notes is the client side piece) as the underlying platform for some healthcare web applications. It would be more accurate to describe Domino as a loosely-structured document database with multi-master replication and a public-key security infrastructure. There is a whole application development layer on top of that, plus additional native features for messaging and workflow. Lotus (and later IBM) then built e-mail, calendar, and groupware applications using those basic building blocks. Those applications ship as part of the product, but you can build your own custom apps that operate on an equal footing. It works extremely well for certain classes of applications. Usually when someone has a bad opinion of Notes/Domino it's because he used an old version of the e-mail application at some previous company, and it did have a sucky user interface. But the current version is on par with anything else out there.
manvsmachine 19y ago
Almost as ironic as the "what the hell is going on with Mozilla" quote.

Isn't it a bit ironic that Lotus Notes is given as an example to good software? I haven't met someone who doesn't hate it.

by hcho 19y ago

Isn't it a bit ironic that Lotus Notes is given as an example to good software? I haven't met someone who doesn't hate it.

run4yourlives 19y ago

Yeah, I usually love Joel's articles, but he lost me after that paragraph. Lotus notes is garbage software.

spolsky 19y ago

I think selling 55,000,000 copies of a software package (around $500 each I think) qualifies as at least one type of success, probably the kind of success that people around here wouldn't mind to have with their own products.

ilamont 19y ago

Hear hear. The Notes adoption curve he points to can be explained by other factors -- marketing, bundling, competition (or lack of it), etc.

spolsky 19y ago
ok, let's hear your explanation then. Notes was pretty advanced for its day and big companies bought it because it actually did what it was supposed to do.
- ekanes 19y ago
  I think the issue is you're mixing the fact that the company/software was commercially successful with whether or not it was great software.

gruseom 19y ago

I haven't met someone who doesn't hate it. I certainly have. And it led me to a little theory: that Lotus Notes' value was in enabling non-programmers to build a certain class of apps. If this is correct, then its value was pretty big (think of spreadsheets). It also explains why programmers hate Lotus Notes so much; systems built this way get messy very quickly (again, think of spreadsheets). But to dismiss the value to users is missing something big and important. In other words, this dispute about "is Lotus Notes good software or garbage" is beside the point, because it's based on two different definitions of "good software". Software that helps users get things done that they can't easily otherwise do is certainly good by their definition even if it's the greatest garbagey kludge ever known. (But I never used Lotus Notes, or even, as far as I know, touched a computer that had it installed... this is just based on stuff I've been told.)

wallflower 19y ago
I read an interview with an IBM technical guy once who claimed that Lotus Notes was first and foremost a synchronization platform (desktop and server) and email was just kind of built on top of that..
- pchristensen 19y ago
  Well synchronization is still a big pain (Exchange server, anyone?) so if that's the problem they solved, then they deserved success.
  - wallflower 19y ago
    "The product was very far ahead of its time. It was the first commercial client/server product." "During this time, the developers at Iris used Lotus Notes to communicate remotely with people at Lotus. Halvorsen said, "Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality." For example, the developers needed to synchronize data between the two different locations, so they invented replication. "This wasn't in the original plan, but the problem arose and we solved it," said Halvorsen." From IBM's "The History of Notes and Domino" http://tinyurl.com/2b8wxk http://tinyurl.com/2b8wxk "Inside Notes provides a single place where you can quickly learn about the architecture of Notes" http://tinyurl.com/ytjkf3 http://tinyurl.com/ytjkf3 [PDF] Note: I love how IBM's web site uses the famed Notes Icon as it's little Website icon identifier :)
    - gruseom 19y ago
      This is significant: Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality. The feedback loop of eating your own dog food is one of the greatest benefits a software project can have. Here the programmers weren't only users of the product, they were using it as an essential part of the development work itself. That's like putting steroids into your dog food and then eating it.
- nradov 19y ago
  I use IBM Lotus Domino server software (Notes is the client side piece) as the underlying platform for some healthcare web applications. It would be more accurate to describe Domino as a loosely-structured document database with multi-master replication and a public-key security infrastructure. There is a whole application development layer on top of that, plus additional native features for messaging and workflow. Lotus (and later IBM) then built e-mail, calendar, and groupware applications using those basic building blocks. Those applications ship as part of the product, but you can build your own custom apps that operate on an equal footing. It works extremely well for certain classes of applications. Usually when someone has a bad opinion of Notes/Domino it's because he used an old version of the e-mail application at some previous company, and it did have a sucky user interface. But the current version is on par with anything else out there.

manvsmachine 19y ago

Almost as ironic as the "what the hell is going on with Mozilla" quote.