4 ms·

Notes was always pretty horrible, slow and buggy. It was right handy to make little databases in it, which wormed their way into business critical processes and

Notes was always pretty horrible, slow and buggy. It was right handy to make little databases in it, which wormed their way into business critical processes and became dependencies long after their developer left the company. I think this is what kept Notes going, because there was no migration path for all this legacy stuff. We spent years moving away from notes, rebuilding each little 'handy Joe's database' that was caught somewhere in a critical business process manually in modern technologies. And this was after we already discarded the 90% that weren't important. I'm pretty sure that if not for this we would have moved away in the early 2000s. Instead we waited until the situation became so untenable that we had no choice to invest the millions and years to make it happen. I remember Notes constantly crashing when someone would send me a 'funny' GIF on Sametime, and of course it would take all my draft emails with it because the autosave never seemed to do what it was supposed to. The only thing I did like about it was collapsible sections in emails. And the fact that you could write really advanced 'agents' for it. I had one that would remove the "return read receipt" flag and insert a button in the email so I could send it whenever I did wish to send it instead. Anyway, when IBM took over Lotus we were still full-on using it and I was really hoping they'd clean up the product and make it functional. Of course none of that happened and they just let it continue on its path to extinction. I have no idea why they would buy something way after its prime and then just let it wither away. Oh yeah and the notes mail databases. When there was a new version we'd get tons of questions like "why does my mail still look like the old app but notes itself is new??". Well, click on the upgrade your database. Ooops now it got corrupted completely well good luck bye :D Seriously why did the email UI look and behaviour have to be embedded inside each user's mail database??? This makes totally no sense and breaks pretty much every software design concept. As well as create tons of vulnerabilities for malware to embed itself. Data and code don't belong in the same place. Though luckily Notes got deprecated before that really became a thing.

acomjean 4y ago
We didn't have any of the stability problems though is was kind of "quirky" (I also used it at another big corp which was only mail, which is terrible). I see you are not a fan. I had to use it and by the end kind of liked it. I didn't have to migrate from notes to something else though. (I migrated a non Y2K database to Notes). I suspect "Mail" was the way to get an installed base of Notes applications across a business. >The only thing I did like about it was collapsible sections in emails. And the fact that you could write really advanced 'agents' for it. I had one that would remove the "return read receipt" flag and insert a button in the email so I could send it whenever I did wish to send it instead. Thats pretty good. I see notes as a basically a NoSQL database attached to a primitive gui and a very bad scripting language (lotus script). You could make a little application and deploy it to a team pretty easily. IBM had a bunch of little Notes databases/applications that could be used by the dept to track project and other things. I haven't seen much that replaces its sort of simplicity and ease of use. I guess the web, but it seems it takes more to stand up a custom app these days. I have no idea how you would export the unstructured data that lives in those databases..
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  > I see you are not a fan. True. This is 15 years of frustration talking. I'm surprised you didn't have the stability problems. So so so many times have I been looking at a standard Windows "OK" popup box with so much java traceback in it that it literally filled the entire screen. Some periods this happened literally every 2 days or so. What helped stability extremely was installing the separate Sametime client and disabling the sametime functionality in Notes itself. However our admins frowned on that for some reason (never found out why). So I always had to get it from dubious sources. > I see notes as a basically a NoSQL database attached to a primitive gui and a very bad scripting language (lotus script). You could make a little application and deploy it to a team pretty easily. Too easily, yes. It was too handy. I wonder if this was intentional because these little databases had a way of becoming indispensable over time. Leading to Notes being set in stone as a business requirement. > IBM had a bunch of little Notes databases/applications that could be used by the dept to track project and other things. I haven't seen much that replaces its sort of simplicity and ease of use. I guess the web, but it seems it takes more to stand up a custom app these days. Yep.. MS Access roughly had the same and it was actually structured as a decent relational database, not some unstructured mess. But file based, a bit like sqlite with a forms and scripting tool built in. So it was also easy to migrate to SQL Server once an app became so big that it needed a real server. MS even had (has?) a wizard for this. It was really piss-easy to make a little tool in it and its scripting language was easier and known by more people (being VBA which most Excel experts know). It was even quite possible to make decently performing fairly complex apps in it. Not sure how it stands now as I haven't used it in years, but from what I've seen with some quick looks throughout the years, Access has not really changed at all since 2005 or so. However, Access did not reach this ubiquity and the reason is that MS left it out of the cheapest office editions. Which meant most standard users never had it on their PC and they would have to request it and provide a business reason for the cost. Notes on the other hand was always there and available, ready for people to tinker with to their heart's desire and create a whole shadow IT world :) Very smart move from Lotus, I have to say. > I have no idea how you would export the unstructured data that lives in those databases.. Oh don't start... It was terrible. None of it was documented because said "handy Joe"s were usually not experienced developers and had almost always left the company years ago. Also, most of these had been unmaintained for many years and thus not really fitting business requirements anymore. So lots of ugly workarounds were used, and the business side tried to use the project to inject new business requirements. Which in some cases made sense but in other ways would derail the project completely. In the end most of them were converted to web using a low-code/zero-code platform.

acomjean 4y ago

We didn't have any of the stability problems though is was kind of "quirky" (I also used it at another big corp which was only mail, which is terrible). I see you are not a fan. I had to use it and by the end kind of liked it. I didn't have to migrate from notes to something else though. (I migrated a non Y2K database to Notes). I suspect "Mail" was the way to get an installed base of Notes applications across a business. >The only thing I did like about it was collapsible sections in emails. And the fact that you could write really advanced 'agents' for it. I had one that would remove the "return read receipt" flag and insert a button in the email so I could send it whenever I did wish to send it instead. Thats pretty good. I see notes as a basically a NoSQL database attached to a primitive gui and a very bad scripting language (lotus script). You could make a little application and deploy it to a team pretty easily. IBM had a bunch of little Notes databases/applications that could be used by the dept to track project and other things. I haven't seen much that replaces its sort of simplicity and ease of use. I guess the web, but it seems it takes more to stand up a custom app these days. I have no idea how you would export the unstructured data that lives in those databases..

GekkePrutser 4y ago
> I see you are not a fan. True. This is 15 years of frustration talking. I'm surprised you didn't have the stability problems. So so so many times have I been looking at a standard Windows "OK" popup box with so much java traceback in it that it literally filled the entire screen. Some periods this happened literally every 2 days or so. What helped stability extremely was installing the separate Sametime client and disabling the sametime functionality in Notes itself. However our admins frowned on that for some reason (never found out why). So I always had to get it from dubious sources. > I see notes as a basically a NoSQL database attached to a primitive gui and a very bad scripting language (lotus script). You could make a little application and deploy it to a team pretty easily. Too easily, yes. It was too handy. I wonder if this was intentional because these little databases had a way of becoming indispensable over time. Leading to Notes being set in stone as a business requirement. > IBM had a bunch of little Notes databases/applications that could be used by the dept to track project and other things. I haven't seen much that replaces its sort of simplicity and ease of use. I guess the web, but it seems it takes more to stand up a custom app these days. Yep.. MS Access roughly had the same and it was actually structured as a decent relational database, not some unstructured mess. But file based, a bit like sqlite with a forms and scripting tool built in. So it was also easy to migrate to SQL Server once an app became so big that it needed a real server. MS even had (has?) a wizard for this. It was really piss-easy to make a little tool in it and its scripting language was easier and known by more people (being VBA which most Excel experts know). It was even quite possible to make decently performing fairly complex apps in it. Not sure how it stands now as I haven't used it in years, but from what I've seen with some quick looks throughout the years, Access has not really changed at all since 2005 or so. However, Access did not reach this ubiquity and the reason is that MS left it out of the cheapest office editions. Which meant most standard users never had it on their PC and they would have to request it and provide a business reason for the cost. Notes on the other hand was always there and available, ready for people to tinker with to their heart's desire and create a whole shadow IT world :) Very smart move from Lotus, I have to say. > I have no idea how you would export the unstructured data that lives in those databases.. Oh don't start... It was terrible. None of it was documented because said "handy Joe"s were usually not experienced developers and had almost always left the company years ago. Also, most of these had been unmaintained for many years and thus not really fitting business requirements anymore. So lots of ugly workarounds were used, and the business side tried to use the project to inject new business requirements. Which in some cases made sense but in other ways would derail the project completely. In the end most of them were converted to web using a low-code/zero-code platform.