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Lotus Notes.

LVB 10y ago
I put up with it for 12 years. It was genuinely a highlight of switching jobs when I got to leave that behind.
beat 10y ago
I want to both upvote and downvote this. Upvote because it's just spectacularly bad, downvote because being reminded of its existence made me throw up in my mouth a little.
n2dasun 10y ago
I opened this thread to look for Lotus Notes.
citrusx 10y ago
You know, I spent a lot of profitable years building apps on top of Notes/Domino during the height of its existence. And, I have to say - for all its flaws, quirks, and limitations, there was no faster way (except perhaps Delphi?) to get small, simple, and highly business-specific internal apps done in a large organization. The reason was that it was totally batteries-included. You had authentication, authorization, a decent NoSQL database (it was the inspiration for CouchDB, if you weren't aware), two (eventually three, when Java was added) languages for writing apps (one of which was kind-of functional), local and server-based event buses, full-text search, integrated email... The list keeps going. So, yeah. People hated using it for email. More than once, I built a better email client for it, and people were suddenly a lot happier with it. There wasn't as much that I could do for the calendar app, which had serious core deficiencies. To be honest, I never understood all the hate, though. Don't get me wrong - no one knew where it was lacking better than I. And, it's been a "dead" product for many years; it would be silly to ever recommend it now. But, executives who never had to even touch the thing would enter a company, and declare that, "We MUST move from this to Microsoft products!" And, the alternatives would always be far worse. (Think Sharepoint, for example.) I'm not even sure that google's productivity products are that big of a step better. Notes solved a lot of hard problems for large organizations, all at once. It wasn't pretty, not was it ever really that fast. But, it enabled business - particularly non-tech business - the ability to automate things in the blink of an eye, for instant improvement. I think that we could all learn a thing or two from looking at why it was so popular in its day, and maybe keep just the good parts in what we do.

Lotus Notes.

LVB 10y ago

I put up with it for 12 years. It was genuinely a highlight of switching jobs when I got to leave that behind.

beat 10y ago

I want to both upvote and downvote this. Upvote because it's just spectacularly bad, downvote because being reminded of its existence made me throw up in my mouth a little.

n2dasun 10y ago

I opened this thread to look for Lotus Notes.

citrusx 10y ago

You know, I spent a lot of profitable years building apps on top of Notes/Domino during the height of its existence. And, I have to say - for all its flaws, quirks, and limitations, there was no faster way (except perhaps Delphi?) to get small, simple, and highly business-specific internal apps done in a large organization. The reason was that it was totally batteries-included. You had authentication, authorization, a decent NoSQL database (it was the inspiration for CouchDB, if you weren't aware), two (eventually three, when Java was added) languages for writing apps (one of which was kind-of functional), local and server-based event buses, full-text search, integrated email... The list keeps going. So, yeah. People hated using it for email. More than once, I built a better email client for it, and people were suddenly a lot happier with it. There wasn't as much that I could do for the calendar app, which had serious core deficiencies. To be honest, I never understood all the hate, though. Don't get me wrong - no one knew where it was lacking better than I. And, it's been a "dead" product for many years; it would be silly to ever recommend it now. But, executives who never had to even touch the thing would enter a company, and declare that, "We MUST move from this to Microsoft products!" And, the alternatives would always be far worse. (Think Sharepoint, for example.) I'm not even sure that google's productivity products are that big of a step better. Notes solved a lot of hard problems for large organizations, all at once. It wasn't pretty, not was it ever really that fast. But, it enabled business - particularly non-tech business - the ability to automate things in the blink of an eye, for instant improvement. I think that we could all learn a thing or two from looking at why it was so popular in its day, and maybe keep just the good parts in what we do.