5 ms·

This may be a bit of an old allusion, but Lotus Notes is a great example of this. Notes is fundamentally a programmable, non-relational, client/server replicate

This may be a bit of an old allusion, but Lotus Notes is a great example of this. Notes is fundamentally a programmable, non-relational, client/server replicated database with a UI on top of it. It's a workflow engine for accomplishing whatever business processes a company might have that can be made to keep working pretty well when the client computer is offline. It can be anything. But it is remembered first and foremost as an email system, a feature that's fairly trivial to implement once you have a replicated database and a UI on top of it that can display lists and text. But it had to be an email system first because you can't sell something that can do anything if it doesn't do anything.

benatkin 2y ago
Obligatory: https://www.dreamingincode.com/ https://www.dreamingincode.com/
kragen 2y ago
I have the vague memory that it was a distributed reimplementation of PLATO Notes, which had otherwise similar capabilities but was born as a bug tracking system?
- OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  It was more of a message board. I mean, I guess you could use a message board as a bug tracking system, but most of the uses I saw were more groups of people planning things... graduation parties, keggers, jam sessions, etc.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Thank you! I don't have any experience with PLATO itself.
    - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
      A few PLATO stories: The first time I saw a PLATO terminal was wandering through one of the engineering buildings at UIUC in '78. I was captured by the "friendly orange glow." There were some people there so I snuck in and started talking to them. I was able to convince them to give me an account on the down-low... don't tell anyone about it 'cause I don't want to get kicked off the system. So I would swing by there or the library on off-peak times so I wouldn't be accused of using the system for frivolous things like music while other people were doing SERIOUS work. It turns out, part of their plan was to give a real account to anyone who wandered by. It was back when we really weren't sure what personal computing was going to look like and they were a university so they experimented with letting high school students, random musicians, liberal arts students, people from town... anyone who asked for an account pretty much got one. One day I learned the new-ish terminals were run by an 8080 CPU and had some I/O off to the side (I think mostly to run a slide projector.) I mentioned this would be great way to control a network of synthesizers and one of the guys said "Oh! You should talk to Sherwin!" -- they were talking about Sherwin Gooch who made the "Gooch Synthetic Woodwind" that hooked up to the PLATO terminal and made wood-windy sounds. I went looking for him but all I found was a box of parts and a story about how he had left town to go to Florida State. Several years later I'm at Florida State working for Paul Dirac (this was right before he passed away, so probably '85.) And hey! They have PLATO terminals at Florida State. I was musing about using them to control synthesizers again to people in Tallahassee and one of them says "Hey! You should talk to Sherwin! He made some musical instrument to hook up to the old terminals!" And I went looking for the mythical Sherwin only to discover a box of parts and a story that he had taken a job in Sili Valley. After a decade of working for Bell Canada, I finally make it out to Sili Valley for a job tuning modular exponentiators for PowerPC devices. This was probably '98. And I go visit a few friends at CCRMA (Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.) I was peripherally involved with psycho-acoustic research at Bell Canada, so it's not a complete stretch for me to be there. I'm chatting with a friend I met in Tallahassee, who happened to be working in Palo Alto. I eventually mention PLATO and the Gooch Virtual Woodwind and my friend says "Oh yea! You should talk to Sherwin!" And I'm ready for him to say something like "but he moved to outer mongolia..." but instead he says "and he's sitting right over there." So after 20 years I finally got to have my conversation with Sherwin about computer music and PLATO. Though honestly, we mostly talked about techniques for solving math problems. --- Fast forward another 15 years and someone launched cyber1.org, which is an online emulated CDC6700(?) running the PLATO software. Just download the pterm package and you can talk to it. You could, apparently, use your old login id so people could find you on the system again. I couldn't remember by group authenticator so it took a few days to get logged in. But what I didn't realize is they way they got everyone's account info was they restored backup tapes from various PLATO installations. I logged in and was presented with pnotes files from about 30 years earlier. Surreal. And it gets weirder because one day I'm in the Living Computer Museum in Seattle and they have a PLATO terminal on display. You were encouraged to use the DEMO account to look at what old networked systems were like, but just for fun I try my FSU account info and... viola! I'm in my FSU account from 1985 on an actual PLATO terminal downstairs talking to an actual (non-emulated) restored CDC6700 upstairs. Like cyber1, they got people's account info from the same backup tapes.
codingdave 2y ago
That is kind of how it went, but there was more than email in its early days. Email existed, but Lotus also sold a separate email product. The rumors at the time ('94) were that Lotus was going to remove email from Notes and focus on apps. But instead IBM bought both and merged them. It got kinda lost from there, while also getting way bigger, but that is a different story. Even so, it did have some app templates that came with it back in those early days - a helpdesk ticketing system, a sales CRM, discussions. I forget what they all were, but there was definitely a base of examples aside from email for people to start with.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
That's HCL Notes, now... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Notes
- raffraffraff 2y ago
  Probably because they already had to support it. HCL won IT support contracts in many banks across Europe and probably elsewhere. I reckon many of those banks still use old IBM tech like mainframes and Notes (for email and internal apps). It's hard to support something when it's EOL and you don't have the source code.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    Domino and Notes is still being actively developed by HCL... https://www.hcl-software.com/domino https://www.hcl-software.com/domino
    - newjersey 2y ago
      I was going to say you couldn't pay me to use Notes again. I went to the link you posted and here was on the top carousel something interesting... So domini/notes is under active development, by a witch company no less. I just have a terrible experience using Notes. I have either somehow erased or locked away most of this memory but I remember getting back to Outlook with a job at a different place and thinking I'll never bad mouth excel again. Yes, notes was that terrible for me. ---- CRITICAL ALERT: The Domino Development team has identified an issue that will affect ALL Domino server versions as of December 13, 2024. If you have no active support contract with HCL for Domino; we would like to assist you in resolving this issue. Please fill out our form and one of our specialists will be in touch with you to discuss your options. See our Knowledge Articles below for more information: Dec 13th Defect Fix Guidance for IBM Domino v9.0.x and v10.0.x Customers https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0118252 https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_a... CRITICAL ALERT: Mail not routing after Domino restarts beginning December 13, 2024 https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0118192 https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_a... ----
PaulHoule 2y ago
I spent about two years in early development of a "Zombocom" product and one question on my mind was "Whatever happened to Lotus Notes?" Superficially it seems the time is right for a rapid development platform for web apps based on an object database with synchronization support. I was sharply divided about the role of email in such a product: I became a qmail fanatic around 1999 and enjoyed running a smart mail server but as we got into the early 2000's I experienced a series of crises involving worms, viruses, malware, spam, deliverability and such. Today I want nothing to do with running a mail server! It's not a problem where you can just invest once and it is done but instead it is like one of those service games. I like the idea of email as a paradigm for asynchronous workflows, and if you're doing business by email (as in CRM) it is useful. On the other hand today the email market is pretty tied up with the likes of Gmail and Outlook
- evntdrvn 2y ago
  I worked at Seagate in the early 2010s, and they made pretty intensive use of Lotus Notes across the company—-it was pretty dang cool to see how sophisticated/useful the internal applications were that non-“developers” created!
helpfulContrib 2y ago
[dead]
jandrese 2y ago
I remember a long long time ago people used Filemaker Pro for all sorts of small data driven applications. I used to think stuff like that would be the future of computing, but instead Filemaker Pro faded into obscurity and most people just use Excel for those kinds of problems now. Or worse, the problem is solved in a clunky and fragile way with outrageously expensive Peoplesoft/Workday/Salesforce type solutions.

benatkin 2y ago

Obligatory: https://www.dreamingincode.com/ https://www.dreamingincode.com/

kragen 2y ago

I have the vague memory that it was a distributed reimplementation of PLATO Notes, which had otherwise similar capabilities but was born as a bug tracking system?

OhMeadhbh 2y ago
It was more of a message board. I mean, I guess you could use a message board as a bug tracking system, but most of the uses I saw were more groups of people planning things... graduation parties, keggers, jam sessions, etc.
- kragen 2y ago
  Thank you! I don't have any experience with PLATO itself.
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    A few PLATO stories: The first time I saw a PLATO terminal was wandering through one of the engineering buildings at UIUC in '78. I was captured by the "friendly orange glow." There were some people there so I snuck in and started talking to them. I was able to convince them to give me an account on the down-low... don't tell anyone about it 'cause I don't want to get kicked off the system. So I would swing by there or the library on off-peak times so I wouldn't be accused of using the system for frivolous things like music while other people were doing SERIOUS work. It turns out, part of their plan was to give a real account to anyone who wandered by. It was back when we really weren't sure what personal computing was going to look like and they were a university so they experimented with letting high school students, random musicians, liberal arts students, people from town... anyone who asked for an account pretty much got one. One day I learned the new-ish terminals were run by an 8080 CPU and had some I/O off to the side (I think mostly to run a slide projector.) I mentioned this would be great way to control a network of synthesizers and one of the guys said "Oh! You should talk to Sherwin!" -- they were talking about Sherwin Gooch who made the "Gooch Synthetic Woodwind" that hooked up to the PLATO terminal and made wood-windy sounds. I went looking for him but all I found was a box of parts and a story about how he had left town to go to Florida State. Several years later I'm at Florida State working for Paul Dirac (this was right before he passed away, so probably '85.) And hey! They have PLATO terminals at Florida State. I was musing about using them to control synthesizers again to people in Tallahassee and one of them says "Hey! You should talk to Sherwin! He made some musical instrument to hook up to the old terminals!" And I went looking for the mythical Sherwin only to discover a box of parts and a story that he had taken a job in Sili Valley. After a decade of working for Bell Canada, I finally make it out to Sili Valley for a job tuning modular exponentiators for PowerPC devices. This was probably '98. And I go visit a few friends at CCRMA (Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.) I was peripherally involved with psycho-acoustic research at Bell Canada, so it's not a complete stretch for me to be there. I'm chatting with a friend I met in Tallahassee, who happened to be working in Palo Alto. I eventually mention PLATO and the Gooch Virtual Woodwind and my friend says "Oh yea! You should talk to Sherwin!" And I'm ready for him to say something like "but he moved to outer mongolia..." but instead he says "and he's sitting right over there." So after 20 years I finally got to have my conversation with Sherwin about computer music and PLATO. Though honestly, we mostly talked about techniques for solving math problems. --- Fast forward another 15 years and someone launched cyber1.org, which is an online emulated CDC6700(?) running the PLATO software. Just download the pterm package and you can talk to it. You could, apparently, use your old login id so people could find you on the system again. I couldn't remember by group authenticator so it took a few days to get logged in. But what I didn't realize is they way they got everyone's account info was they restored backup tapes from various PLATO installations. I logged in and was presented with pnotes files from about 30 years earlier. Surreal. And it gets weirder because one day I'm in the Living Computer Museum in Seattle and they have a PLATO terminal on display. You were encouraged to use the DEMO account to look at what old networked systems were like, but just for fun I try my FSU account info and... viola! I'm in my FSU account from 1985 on an actual PLATO terminal downstairs talking to an actual (non-emulated) restored CDC6700 upstairs. Like cyber1, they got people's account info from the same backup tapes.

codingdave 2y ago

That is kind of how it went, but there was more than email in its early days. Email existed, but Lotus also sold a separate email product. The rumors at the time ('94) were that Lotus was going to remove email from Notes and focus on apps. But instead IBM bought both and merged them. It got kinda lost from there, while also getting way bigger, but that is a different story. Even so, it did have some app templates that came with it back in those early days - a helpdesk ticketing system, a sales CRM, discussions. I forget what they all were, but there was definitely a base of examples aside from email for people to start with.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

That's HCL Notes, now... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Notes

raffraffraff 2y ago
Probably because they already had to support it. HCL won IT support contracts in many banks across Europe and probably elsewhere. I reckon many of those banks still use old IBM tech like mainframes and Notes (for email and internal apps). It's hard to support something when it's EOL and you don't have the source code.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  Domino and Notes is still being actively developed by HCL... https://www.hcl-software.com/domino https://www.hcl-software.com/domino
  - newjersey 2y ago
    I was going to say you couldn't pay me to use Notes again. I went to the link you posted and here was on the top carousel something interesting... So domini/notes is under active development, by a witch company no less. I just have a terrible experience using Notes. I have either somehow erased or locked away most of this memory but I remember getting back to Outlook with a job at a different place and thinking I'll never bad mouth excel again. Yes, notes was that terrible for me. ---- CRITICAL ALERT: The Domino Development team has identified an issue that will affect ALL Domino server versions as of December 13, 2024. If you have no active support contract with HCL for Domino; we would like to assist you in resolving this issue. Please fill out our form and one of our specialists will be in touch with you to discuss your options. See our Knowledge Articles below for more information: Dec 13th Defect Fix Guidance for IBM Domino v9.0.x and v10.0.x Customers https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0118252 https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_a... CRITICAL ALERT: Mail not routing after Domino restarts beginning December 13, 2024 https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0118192 https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_a... ----

PaulHoule 2y ago

I spent about two years in early development of a "Zombocom" product and one question on my mind was "Whatever happened to Lotus Notes?" Superficially it seems the time is right for a rapid development platform for web apps based on an object database with synchronization support. I was sharply divided about the role of email in such a product: I became a qmail fanatic around 1999 and enjoyed running a smart mail server but as we got into the early 2000's I experienced a series of crises involving worms, viruses, malware, spam, deliverability and such. Today I want nothing to do with running a mail server! It's not a problem where you can just invest once and it is done but instead it is like one of those service games. I like the idea of email as a paradigm for asynchronous workflows, and if you're doing business by email (as in CRM) it is useful. On the other hand today the email market is pretty tied up with the likes of Gmail and Outlook

evntdrvn 2y ago
I worked at Seagate in the early 2010s, and they made pretty intensive use of Lotus Notes across the company—-it was pretty dang cool to see how sophisticated/useful the internal applications were that non-“developers” created!

helpfulContrib 2y ago

[dead]

jandrese 2y ago

I remember a long long time ago people used Filemaker Pro for all sorts of small data driven applications. I used to think stuff like that would be the future of computing, but instead Filemaker Pro faded into obscurity and most people just use Excel for those kinds of problems now. Or worse, the problem is solved in a clunky and fragile way with outrageously expensive Peoplesoft/Workday/Salesforce type solutions.