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That's because the tooling does well enough versus your $50k dev project. I'm not a fan of LightSwitch myself, but this is the right step forward for business

That's because the tooling does well enough versus your $50k dev project. I'm not a fan of LightSwitch myself, but this is the right step forward for business software and fits in with the Office VBA ecosystem well (i.e. customise it yourself). It's business mecca.

tluyben2 14y ago
Sure, that's not what they/I mean though. They made something to register hours for their employees (perfect case for Access/Lightswitch) and asked us for a quote for a complex public facing SAAS solution. And the 'case' they want to make is to ask why there is so much programming involved even EVEN HE can make 'a complete application' in a few days. Lightswitch and other systems like it have their domains and work well in those domains, but less tech clients cannot see the difference between one domain and the other. A web project we did in another 'codeless' tool (which is just not true as you are coding, just in another way) was delivered and the client said; we saw on the tool vendor's site that you just press one button to make the web site into mobile apps for all devices. So why are you charging us for that? In short; people believe what vendors say on the golf course or on their sites. Even if those cases are completely out of context; people don't KNOW that they are. If a CEO of tool-vendor X tells CEO Y on the golf course that their product 'fixes all IT problems because anyone can make solutions for web and mobile with it', then CEO Y will tell buy this product. Although neither CEO X or Y know actually what the product does. This is really normal. So then the product gets pushed down to the production managers and they get the 'command' to 'use it for everything, because we are shifting to this product as it will save us millions in IT costs'. I have seen this many times (in big and small companies) and I see it with LightSwitch as well; with Sharepoint too; I know a few companies who make everything with SP, much to the dismay of the IT dep. Edit: and I don't really know if it's the right way for businesses to go. I remember Access well; I remember institutions, for instance the main Dutch court, creating MONSTERS in that themselves because it's easy and (almost) no programming. Then when the guy/girl who did this leaves, someone needs to take it over. We are talking about a complete mess which is business critical. So I believe it has it's place, but only for small departmental apps; if they grow they should be replaced by something solid and this should be considered the prototype. IMHO.
- eckyptang 14y ago
  Actually, I think your reasoning is flawed here. 1. They should just use something like replicon ( http://www.replicon.com/ http://www.replicon.com/ ) for that. Don't build if something already exists. 2. Lightswitch solutions are not designed to be sold by consultancies of external developers. They are designed to be in house built and maintained as per VBA apps. Access is still doing fine for a number of cases. I still have to maintain an Access 7.0 database for inventory tracking/management on NT4 which I built in 1997. It still does the job so there is no reason to replace it. I will be early next year moving it to Access 2010 on Windows 7 as their hardware is now dying miserably and that is the only motivation to upgrade it. Note: this is running on SQL6.5 with 50 users.
  - tluyben2 14y ago
    Why is my reasoning flawed? Which part exactly? The part where people internally write horrible software on these 'code less' platforms? Company critical software which then somehow needs to be maintained by some poor programmer? I just tell what I see in real life and that's not pretty. Maybe your Access db wasn't such a mess. If you have over 50.000 lines of VBA written by people who never programmed but learned it organically by changing the application, then i'm not sure if it shouldn't be replaced. Any change to that system is a huge danger.

tluyben2 14y ago

Sure, that's not what they/I mean though. They made something to register hours for their employees (perfect case for Access/Lightswitch) and asked us for a quote for a complex public facing SAAS solution. And the 'case' they want to make is to ask why there is so much programming involved even EVEN HE can make 'a complete application' in a few days. Lightswitch and other systems like it have their domains and work well in those domains, but less tech clients cannot see the difference between one domain and the other. A web project we did in another 'codeless' tool (which is just not true as you are coding, just in another way) was delivered and the client said; we saw on the tool vendor's site that you just press one button to make the web site into mobile apps for all devices. So why are you charging us for that? In short; people believe what vendors say on the golf course or on their sites. Even if those cases are completely out of context; people don't KNOW that they are. If a CEO of tool-vendor X tells CEO Y on the golf course that their product 'fixes all IT problems because anyone can make solutions for web and mobile with it', then CEO Y will tell buy this product. Although neither CEO X or Y know actually what the product does. This is really normal. So then the product gets pushed down to the production managers and they get the 'command' to 'use it for everything, because we are shifting to this product as it will save us millions in IT costs'. I have seen this many times (in big and small companies) and I see it with LightSwitch as well; with Sharepoint too; I know a few companies who make everything with SP, much to the dismay of the IT dep. Edit: and I don't really know if it's the right way for businesses to go. I remember Access well; I remember institutions, for instance the main Dutch court, creating MONSTERS in that themselves because it's easy and (almost) no programming. Then when the guy/girl who did this leaves, someone needs to take it over. We are talking about a complete mess which is business critical. So I believe it has it's place, but only for small departmental apps; if they grow they should be replaced by something solid and this should be considered the prototype. IMHO.

eckyptang 14y ago
Actually, I think your reasoning is flawed here. 1. They should just use something like replicon ( http://www.replicon.com/ http://www.replicon.com/ ) for that. Don't build if something already exists. 2. Lightswitch solutions are not designed to be sold by consultancies of external developers. They are designed to be in house built and maintained as per VBA apps. Access is still doing fine for a number of cases. I still have to maintain an Access 7.0 database for inventory tracking/management on NT4 which I built in 1997. It still does the job so there is no reason to replace it. I will be early next year moving it to Access 2010 on Windows 7 as their hardware is now dying miserably and that is the only motivation to upgrade it. Note: this is running on SQL6.5 with 50 users.
- tluyben2 14y ago
  Why is my reasoning flawed? Which part exactly? The part where people internally write horrible software on these 'code less' platforms? Company critical software which then somehow needs to be maintained by some poor programmer? I just tell what I see in real life and that's not pretty. Maybe your Access db wasn't such a mess. If you have over 50.000 lines of VBA written by people who never programmed but learned it organically by changing the application, then i'm not sure if it shouldn't be replaced. Any change to that system is a huge danger.