6 ms·

I don't feel bad for all those businesses that bought applications built with ActiveX software and had to stick on Windows XP and IE6 forever. A lot of that so

I don't feel bad for all those businesses that bought applications built with ActiveX software and had to stick on Windows XP and IE6 forever. A lot of that software had horrible UIs, causing severe stress for employees. Imagine hand entering detailed orders where just the tiny wrong thing was off, the wrong order, a typo in a SKU number, the wrong quantity would costs thousands lost in shipping and product returns. The employee gets the blame when that happens. No undo, no saving progress, no validation, no checking of any kind, just HTML input boxes powered by ActiveX and the employee gets the blame for things that could have been automated better. You ever had your taxes done at H&R Block? They still use some ancient software where you can't even copy and paste out of an input box. In 2014. On a desktop. I'm talking about PeopleSoft software and ugly, clunky and buggy software by some local developer written in their garage at rock bottom prices for a company that could have afforded more but just didn't care about what it was putting its employees through. I'm glad they're having to pay through their teeth now. It's companies like this that kept IE6 around so long.

Alterlife 12y ago
I wouldn't necessarily call Peoplesoft beautiful... but the current version (atleast in my opinion) is not clunky. What version of Peoplesoft are you talking about?
tormeh 12y ago
I agree. They could have written their software as multiplatform JVM apps or whatever, but no - had to be OS-specific, unportable programs. They deserve everything they get.
- noselasd 12y ago
  Do also their customers deserve that ? They're the ones suffering and also risk going out of business. There's a lot of businesses that are not tech companies, but still need software to operate. The people at such companies likely have no premise to judge whether the software product is built on sustainable technology - they just care that it does a fine job at operates their CNC mill or payroll system.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Yep, they definitely do. If it's such a problem they can buy insurance against bad technical decisions or something. I have a lot of sympathy for individual people, but bad businesses need to fail. That's half of progress.
    - lttlrck 12y ago
      Insurance against bad technical decisions? LOL. Sorry, but we'll have to stick with "or something"
      - beavis2 12y ago
        But what if getting the insurance was a bad decision?
        tormeh 12y ago
        Haha! That's good.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    > Do also their customers deserve that ? Absolutely, yes. Bad decisions put companies out of business every day. Bad technical decisions should be no different. Better luck next time.
  - danelectro 12y ago
    If it's an electronic product, the customer rightly expects it to last as long as other familiar electronic products. If it's an expensive product then the customer rightly expects it to last much longer than comparable items of lesser cost. For a naturally expensive item like a CNC mill, where many customers will purchase their first one to replace a manual mill which has worn out after a decade or two, they often expect the modern CNC unit to fully replace the older piece with no further consideration (or cost) until the same familiar mode of mechanical wear occurs in another decade or two. If your software or operating system does not live up to this expectation by design, then you are not giving the customer what they need to begin with. If an industrial solution truly solves a problem, it stays solved well enough for the operator to move on to concentrate on their core competence (or different unsolved problems) from then on, and only incur insignificant costs or distractions from the previously unsolved problem. A payroll or other office system is not that much different, but applies to many more businesses. Computerizing a formerly manual system, high up-front cost is expected to pay for itself in future efficiency. If no further features are desired, then the business should be able to rely on electro-mechanical integrity as the weakest point over the following decades. Replacing individual worn-out office machines as needed in the traditional way. Only "modernizing" company-wide on their own initiative and schedule. If you can not buy brand new machines as needed to continue your present office systems unchanged indefinitely if you want to, this does not mean there is a defect in your approach just because you need a solved problem to stay solved. You may just be a victim of a consumer-centric (predatory) IT vendor structure even though you are paying top dollar for business solutions which are supposed to last.
- danudey 12y ago
  A huge number of Java apps built for enterprises or corporations are Windows-native as well. Either compiled down to a .exe, installed via a Windows-native Installshield installer, built using Windows-only native-library code, or designed assuming Windows (e.g. referencing C:\ directly in the code). And honestly, paying extra in 1998 to have the contractor write a Java app to support multiple operating systems would have been a huge waste of money, since there weren't really any other platforms that businesses used (or at least, not these businesses). The real 'they deserve everything they get' is that they didn't start this process sooner. The IT departments should have gotten their hands on the Vista DVD, tested their custom software, seen which way the wind was blowing, and started a project to modernize their systems. They could have spread the project (and cost) out over seven years, but instead they didn't start the process until it was too late to avoid huge expenses. It's exactly the same as people who didn't take Y2K seriously until September 1999, and then said 'Okay we need to update all of our things, can we have that done by November just to make sure?'
  - tormeh 12y ago
    >A huge number of Java apps built for enterprises or corporations are Windows-native as well. Either compiled down to a .exe, installed via a Windows-native Installshield installer, built using Windows-only native-library code, or designed assuming Windows (e.g. referencing C:\ directly in the code). That reads like a catalogue of worst practices. It's possible to make Java apps really portable by doing absolutely nothing. You compile Java code to .class format, and then you are done. You would probably want to include your own JVM and a shortcut or bash file invoking it on the bytecode, but the point is it's actually more effort to make them non-portable.
ejr 12y ago
There are a large number of medical systems that still require XP as well. Many of those proprietary systems and programs were specifically built for it and changes are both expensive and drastic. Both frowned upon by hospital administration.
blatherard 12y ago
John Lewis, the subject of the article, is an employee-owned company [1] that operates multiple business lines. I don't know the internal dealings of the company, but I'd attribute their slow upgrade path more to the costs and difficulties associated with a large-scale rollout rather than managerial indifference. I also wouldn't delight at the cost of the upgrade, which will directly affect the profitability of the company and therefore reduce the profit-sharing that all employee-partners participate in. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership#Organisation_of_the_Partnership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership#Organisa...
smackfu 12y ago
The bizarre thing is that ActiveX is about letting your run native code from a web browser, so it should have a better platform-matching UI than a JVM or a web app.
yasth 12y ago
ActiveX wasn't used for HTML input boxes. It was generally used for companies to leverage their existing desktop developers in a "web" context. The reason it basically couldn't be ported to other platforms is because it could use all of the win32 libraries. You could literally take a desktop app, and inside of a couple days get an ActiveX "Web" App. Bad software certainly wasn't and isn't limited to activeX however. It is just bad software and can happen with a full web 2.0 singing and dancing website as any other. I've seen plenty of website dynamically load in content over other partially filled content without so much as a warning.
- danudey 12y ago
  In this sense, ActiveX was often used as a sort of JNLP replacement. Go to a website, click a thing, boom, app. No installing, no deploying, no upgrading. The appeal is easy to see. ActiveX gets a bad rap, but it's no worse than Java in a lot of context. The major downside is that it's Windows-only, but honestly so are a lot of Java apps (in practice, if not in design; e.g. native DLLs, OS assumptions), and in 2001 that wasn't really a huge issue for anyone. Heck, there was a JNLP-installed call centre app that we used at a previous company (in 2009) which was technically a 'java' 'web' app but used Windows-native libraries and put them into the Program Files directory. If it could. Which it often couldn't. So if you weren't an administrator (so, for example, you were a call centre employee), it would 'install' but it wouldn't 'work'. Meaning that I, as the IT guy, had to go to every computer, log in as an admin, load the program, quit the program, and log out, on every computer. So yeah, stupid mistakes aren't just limited to ActiveX, and aren't just limited to custom software built in 2002.

Alterlife 12y ago

I wouldn't necessarily call Peoplesoft beautiful... but the current version (atleast in my opinion) is not clunky. What version of Peoplesoft are you talking about?

tormeh 12y ago

I agree. They could have written their software as multiplatform JVM apps or whatever, but no - had to be OS-specific, unportable programs. They deserve everything they get.

noselasd 12y ago
Do also their customers deserve that ? They're the ones suffering and also risk going out of business. There's a lot of businesses that are not tech companies, but still need software to operate. The people at such companies likely have no premise to judge whether the software product is built on sustainable technology - they just care that it does a fine job at operates their CNC mill or payroll system.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Yep, they definitely do. If it's such a problem they can buy insurance against bad technical decisions or something. I have a lot of sympathy for individual people, but bad businesses need to fail. That's half of progress.
  - lttlrck 12y ago
    Insurance against bad technical decisions? LOL. Sorry, but we'll have to stick with "or something"
    - beavis2 12y ago
      But what if getting the insurance was a bad decision?
      - tormeh 12y ago
        Haha! That's good.
- rbanffy 12y ago
  > Do also their customers deserve that ? Absolutely, yes. Bad decisions put companies out of business every day. Bad technical decisions should be no different. Better luck next time.
- danelectro 12y ago
  If it's an electronic product, the customer rightly expects it to last as long as other familiar electronic products. If it's an expensive product then the customer rightly expects it to last much longer than comparable items of lesser cost. For a naturally expensive item like a CNC mill, where many customers will purchase their first one to replace a manual mill which has worn out after a decade or two, they often expect the modern CNC unit to fully replace the older piece with no further consideration (or cost) until the same familiar mode of mechanical wear occurs in another decade or two. If your software or operating system does not live up to this expectation by design, then you are not giving the customer what they need to begin with. If an industrial solution truly solves a problem, it stays solved well enough for the operator to move on to concentrate on their core competence (or different unsolved problems) from then on, and only incur insignificant costs or distractions from the previously unsolved problem. A payroll or other office system is not that much different, but applies to many more businesses. Computerizing a formerly manual system, high up-front cost is expected to pay for itself in future efficiency. If no further features are desired, then the business should be able to rely on electro-mechanical integrity as the weakest point over the following decades. Replacing individual worn-out office machines as needed in the traditional way. Only "modernizing" company-wide on their own initiative and schedule. If you can not buy brand new machines as needed to continue your present office systems unchanged indefinitely if you want to, this does not mean there is a defect in your approach just because you need a solved problem to stay solved. You may just be a victim of a consumer-centric (predatory) IT vendor structure even though you are paying top dollar for business solutions which are supposed to last.
danudey 12y ago
A huge number of Java apps built for enterprises or corporations are Windows-native as well. Either compiled down to a .exe, installed via a Windows-native Installshield installer, built using Windows-only native-library code, or designed assuming Windows (e.g. referencing C:\ directly in the code). And honestly, paying extra in 1998 to have the contractor write a Java app to support multiple operating systems would have been a huge waste of money, since there weren't really any other platforms that businesses used (or at least, not these businesses). The real 'they deserve everything they get' is that they didn't start this process sooner. The IT departments should have gotten their hands on the Vista DVD, tested their custom software, seen which way the wind was blowing, and started a project to modernize their systems. They could have spread the project (and cost) out over seven years, but instead they didn't start the process until it was too late to avoid huge expenses. It's exactly the same as people who didn't take Y2K seriously until September 1999, and then said 'Okay we need to update all of our things, can we have that done by November just to make sure?'
- tormeh 12y ago
  >A huge number of Java apps built for enterprises or corporations are Windows-native as well. Either compiled down to a .exe, installed via a Windows-native Installshield installer, built using Windows-only native-library code, or designed assuming Windows (e.g. referencing C:\ directly in the code). That reads like a catalogue of worst practices. It's possible to make Java apps really portable by doing absolutely nothing. You compile Java code to .class format, and then you are done. You would probably want to include your own JVM and a shortcut or bash file invoking it on the bytecode, but the point is it's actually more effort to make them non-portable.

ejr 12y ago

There are a large number of medical systems that still require XP as well. Many of those proprietary systems and programs were specifically built for it and changes are both expensive and drastic. Both frowned upon by hospital administration.

blatherard 12y ago

John Lewis, the subject of the article, is an employee-owned company [1] that operates multiple business lines. I don't know the internal dealings of the company, but I'd attribute their slow upgrade path more to the costs and difficulties associated with a large-scale rollout rather than managerial indifference. I also wouldn't delight at the cost of the upgrade, which will directly affect the profitability of the company and therefore reduce the profit-sharing that all employee-partners participate in. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership#Organisation_of_the_Partnership http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership#Organisa...

smackfu 12y ago

The bizarre thing is that ActiveX is about letting your run native code from a web browser, so it should have a better platform-matching UI than a JVM or a web app.

yasth 12y ago

ActiveX wasn't used for HTML input boxes. It was generally used for companies to leverage their existing desktop developers in a "web" context. The reason it basically couldn't be ported to other platforms is because it could use all of the win32 libraries. You could literally take a desktop app, and inside of a couple days get an ActiveX "Web" App. Bad software certainly wasn't and isn't limited to activeX however. It is just bad software and can happen with a full web 2.0 singing and dancing website as any other. I've seen plenty of website dynamically load in content over other partially filled content without so much as a warning.

danudey 12y ago
In this sense, ActiveX was often used as a sort of JNLP replacement. Go to a website, click a thing, boom, app. No installing, no deploying, no upgrading. The appeal is easy to see. ActiveX gets a bad rap, but it's no worse than Java in a lot of context. The major downside is that it's Windows-only, but honestly so are a lot of Java apps (in practice, if not in design; e.g. native DLLs, OS assumptions), and in 2001 that wasn't really a huge issue for anyone. Heck, there was a JNLP-installed call centre app that we used at a previous company (in 2009) which was technically a 'java' 'web' app but used Windows-native libraries and put them into the Program Files directory. If it could. Which it often couldn't. So if you weren't an administrator (so, for example, you were a call centre employee), it would 'install' but it wouldn't 'work'. Meaning that I, as the IT guy, had to go to every computer, log in as an admin, load the program, quit the program, and log out, on every computer. So yeah, stupid mistakes aren't just limited to ActiveX, and aren't just limited to custom software built in 2002.