4 ms·
What I've seen continually in government is the dreaded form-builder Frankenstein. 1. Gov thinks it needs some simple form building 2. Chooses a vendor form bu
by ilikerashers 6y ago
What I've seen continually in government is the dreaded form-builder Frankenstein.
1. Gov thinks it needs some simple form building
2. Chooses a vendor form building framework, some mashup of ASP.NET usually with workflow tools
3. Oh, we'd like documents stored, and an integration with another system, and a custom reporting tool, and a payment function, and a appointment booking.
4. Vendor doesn't want to lose business so builds custom code into the "simple" form/workflow tool.
All of sudden the simple form tool is customized beyond belief, falls behind on updates and becomes impossible to change. Worst still, nobody wants to invest in it because it just-about-works.
- stopyellingatme 6y agoNail on the head.
- spaetzleesser 6y agoI work in medical and there the top guys often make decisions that are really hard to implement in software. If they understood only a little of the consequences of their decisions have they would probably think a little more about the rules they are creating. I see the same in product development. Marketing comes up with something that has words like "most of the time", "sometime" or "somehow" in the description. Really hard to impossible to implement. When I ask them what they really want to achieve we usually end up with something simpler and straightforward that fulfills the needs, is well understood and easy to implement. I think in government with most of the work being outsourcend this feedback loop doesn't exist. A committee comes up with something and the contractor implements it without questions asked. The more complex the work, the more money for the contractor.
- cratermoon 6y agoI work with authentication protocols and access control. Product people want magic.
- spaetzleesser 6y agoI am fine with product people expressing their wants. But we shouldn’t accept their requests blindly but put them through a reality check. The customer is not always right or at least the customer doesn’t explain his real problem properly.
- cratermoon 6y agoThat's true, but power dynamics don't always align with wishes. If the professional recommendations of security people weren't so routinely ignored, you'd see a lot less stupid breaches. A great many disasters^1 could be prevented if experts weren't ignored. [1] https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3570/1/Feynman.pdf https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3570/1/Feynman.pdf
- snth 6y agoBah. People have to ignore security professionals all the time, because all too often, security professionals don't care if any software gets shipped.
- spaetzleesser 6y agoThat's unfortunately true too. I often break IT policies because I have to do my job and when I ask they don't have an answer. Security people definitely can't just say "No" but have to help finding a solution.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoEveryone wants magic, even technologists. Unfortunately, magic is hard work.
- mattmanser 6y agoASP.net with windows workflow foundation hasn't existed for like 10 years or something like that.
- wernercd 6y agoVBA hasn't been updated since 2010... yet it's still going strong. Things like this create a niche and will live longer than cockroaches after a nuclear war.
- mattmanser 6y agoVBA is still the main way of writing macros. There are plenty of jobs requiring VBA. Try and find a job for asp.net webforms and windows workflow foundation. So kinda pointless you posting that really. One is still 'current', but the other you'll be writing asp.net core with modern MVC.
- wernercd 6y agofirst result in google is a handful of jobs... not many but definitely they exist. https://www.indeed.com/q-What-Is-Windows-Workflow-Foundation-Wf-jobs.html https://www.indeed.com/q-What-Is-Windows-Workflow-Foundation... And many more for webforms https://www.indeed.com/q-Webforms-jobs.html https://www.indeed.com/q-Webforms-jobs.html Niche things live on... as my post states.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]