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IBM makes some of the worst front end software in the world. Lotus Notes, Rational Rose, Doors etc. Deeply nested menus, one level of undo, zero to negative OS

IBM makes some of the worst front end software in the world. Lotus Notes, Rational Rose, Doors etc. Deeply nested menus, one level of undo, zero to negative OS integration, bugs that never get fixed, unsearchable documentation, bloat upon bloat, everything that gives enterprise software a bad name. I wonder whether Apple will bring IBM up or will IBM bring Apple down on that front.

Tloewald 12y ago
To be fair, lotus notes was awful before IBM bought it.
- codingdave 12y ago
  No, no it really wasn't. It had some well-earned respect, and was innovative. It offered power to the users that was unheard of in those days, allowing them to spin out their own discussions and applications without needing software developers to help out. It clustered, it scaled, it had granular levels of security that still hold up today. It was used to build online communities in the days when dial-up BBSes were the norm. While the UI of its client sucked compared to anything we see today, those were the days of Windows 3.1. Everything sucked back then. It has aged poorly. But it had its place, and its time.
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    Really it was. I used it before IBM bought it and it was awful. Good technology but execrable UI.
jmspring 12y ago
I actually really liked workplace shell in OS/2, though question is - was that the IBM or Microsoft side of the house.
- yuhong 12y ago
  I think it was done by IBM. As a side note, I think a lot of the memory consumption of 32-bit OS/2 comes from it.
72deluxe 12y ago
I used Informix 11 inside Cisco CM and it seemed alright, although their syntax for returning data from stored procedures seemed odd (they returned data by shoving it into variables and then calling return multiple times in a loop instead of just returning a "set" data type) but that could be my unfamiliarity with it. Those SPs were pretty massive too, hundreds and hundreds of lines long, calling other hundred lines SPs.

Tloewald 12y ago

To be fair, lotus notes was awful before IBM bought it.

codingdave 12y ago
No, no it really wasn't. It had some well-earned respect, and was innovative. It offered power to the users that was unheard of in those days, allowing them to spin out their own discussions and applications without needing software developers to help out. It clustered, it scaled, it had granular levels of security that still hold up today. It was used to build online communities in the days when dial-up BBSes were the norm. While the UI of its client sucked compared to anything we see today, those were the days of Windows 3.1. Everything sucked back then. It has aged poorly. But it had its place, and its time.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Really it was. I used it before IBM bought it and it was awful. Good technology but execrable UI.

jmspring 12y ago

I actually really liked workplace shell in OS/2, though question is - was that the IBM or Microsoft side of the house.

yuhong 12y ago
I think it was done by IBM. As a side note, I think a lot of the memory consumption of 32-bit OS/2 comes from it.

72deluxe 12y ago

I used Informix 11 inside Cisco CM and it seemed alright, although their syntax for returning data from stored procedures seemed odd (they returned data by shoving it into variables and then calling return multiple times in a loop instead of just returning a "set" data type) but that could be my unfamiliarity with it. Those SPs were pretty massive too, hundreds and hundreds of lines long, calling other hundred lines SPs.