3 ms·
"Integration software products ... are not products that directly solve a business problem. ... They are programming languages, bundled with a toolchain and a r
by throwaway984393 5y ago
"Integration software products ... are not products that directly solve a business problem. ... They are programming languages, bundled with a toolchain and a runtime to support the compilation process."
By this definition, Excel is a form of integration tool. A spreadsheet doesn't "directly solve a business problem". It's basically just a piece of paper with lines on it, along with some "programming formulas". A hammer would be an integration tool if it were digital.
The technology industry is wholeheartedly committed to selling you the idea that you need to write software. The industry knows that will guarantee new customers (and profits) for decades to come, for all the things you'll need to buy into to "solve" the software engineering problems you'll undoubtedly encounter. But do you need to write software to solve it? Most other industries do not make things themselves when they need to solve a problem. They don't buy anvils when they need nails, they don't buy sewing machines when they need to clothe their workers, and they don't build industrial machines when they need to produce factory goods. They don't build cars when they need to deliver pizzas, nor build ovens to bake them, nor knives to cut them. There are always exceptions, but for rare, exceptional cases.
I think the meat of this article is predicated on the idea that it's expected that you need to be somehow developing software to solve business problems. But really, none of the technologies in this article should be needed to solve most business problems. If there isn't an existing product for sale that's general enough to solve your problem, that's the problem we should be solving; not writing software for every single business case under the sun.
- Jtsummers 5y ago> "Integration software products ... are not products that directly solve a business problem. ... They are programming languages, bundled with a toolchain and a runtime to support the compilation process." > By this definition, Excel is a form of integration tool. A spreadsheet doesn't "directly solve a business problem". It's basically just a piece of paper with lines on it, along with some "programming formulas". A hammer would be an integration tool if it were digital. You're misreading that quote. The direction is actually important in conveying meaning, it's like trying to misread "Every ancient poet known as Homer was a man" as "all men are ancient poets known as Homer".
- mr_toad 5y ago> By this definition, Excel is a form of integration tool. If you’re unlucky it’s your only integration tool. When there are no APIs, when you can’t get approval to use a tool or language, when the DBAs won’t return your calls; then export to Excel is the only integration tool you’ve got.
- JanisL 5y agoI think a lot of skilled software developers might be unaware of just how bad the practices can be in non-software companies regarding software development. A few years back I remember a big corp explicitly telling me that a project for an Excel based integration between some systems would have easily got buyin and budget. Despite it being in a broader sense a crappy tool for the job due to everyone having excel installed and almost nobody being able to get approval in a reasonable amount of time for anything else to get installed it did appear to be the easiest option in the circumstances. Before this I think I was one of those people who just ruled out using Excel for integrations because I just couldn't see how it could possibly be the best option in any circumstances.