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A good read, but ultimately disappointing, since it offers no real advice on correcting the issue, spare "CIO's must get educated". Question for all of you hac

A good read, but ultimately disappointing, since it offers no real advice on correcting the issue, spare "CIO's must get educated". Question for all of you hackers: Do you have examples of companies that have realized the issues in the article and then successfully implemented strategies (no matter how crazy) that solved the problem? Off hand, my opinion of enterprise systems and the "solution" to them is close to what DHH (of rails fame) thinks: nuke 'em all and get little apps to do little things. Are there other examples of different approaches?

davidw 19y ago
"nuke 'em all and get little apps to do little things." That only works if the little apps can speak together very, very well. My most recent "real job" was at a large on-line bookseller in Italy, and everything has to be integrated: - The web site has to know about the presence or lack of books in the warehouse. - The customer order system has to know about the warehouse. - There needs to be an automated solution that knows how to order from suppliers, and the web site needs to know how long it takes to get a book from supplier X, on average, and thus needs access to supplier order statistics. - The boss has to be able to see the numbers going by in the whole system, and be able to create promotional offers and things like that. etc...
michaelneale 19y ago
i thought the article was a little critical of the "little apps" approach. I think the point wasn't so much the mess of things, its more that the approaches used are very very basic (like a big unforgiving calculator more then intelligence). I am not sure how the "DHH approach" makes that any better (I have never seen a rails app that I would call intelligent at all - they are web gui's for databases is all - pretty, cheap to build and pleasant enough to use, for sure, but still, not "intelligent" in the way the article talks about).
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  I agree, I don't think those little apps scale well. The problem is I haven't seen anything that scales well. I think the solution is not the technology, but the system they are forced to deal with. I suppose I was looking for something more around how you can change the corporation to fit the tech. (Yes, I know that's entirely backwards)
  - michaelneale 19y ago
    yeah - well I guess its easier to "hope" as the article says that technology can solve the problem, when really it is a people problem. I think we put too much emphasis on the tech as to why things go right or wrong. We should just shut up and do stuff (plenty of people do, they just don't necessarily blog about it 24/7).

davidw 19y ago

"nuke 'em all and get little apps to do little things." That only works if the little apps can speak together very, very well. My most recent "real job" was at a large on-line bookseller in Italy, and everything has to be integrated: - The web site has to know about the presence or lack of books in the warehouse. - The customer order system has to know about the warehouse. - There needs to be an automated solution that knows how to order from suppliers, and the web site needs to know how long it takes to get a book from supplier X, on average, and thus needs access to supplier order statistics. - The boss has to be able to see the numbers going by in the whole system, and be able to create promotional offers and things like that. etc...

michaelneale 19y ago

i thought the article was a little critical of the "little apps" approach. I think the point wasn't so much the mess of things, its more that the approaches used are very very basic (like a big unforgiving calculator more then intelligence). I am not sure how the "DHH approach" makes that any better (I have never seen a rails app that I would call intelligent at all - they are web gui's for databases is all - pretty, cheap to build and pleasant enough to use, for sure, but still, not "intelligent" in the way the article talks about).

run4yourlives 19y ago
I agree, I don't think those little apps scale well. The problem is I haven't seen anything that scales well. I think the solution is not the technology, but the system they are forced to deal with. I suppose I was looking for something more around how you can change the corporation to fit the tech. (Yes, I know that's entirely backwards)
- michaelneale 19y ago
  yeah - well I guess its easier to "hope" as the article says that technology can solve the problem, when really it is a people problem. I think we put too much emphasis on the tech as to why things go right or wrong. We should just shut up and do stuff (plenty of people do, they just don't necessarily blog about it 24/7).