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Friday, August 09, 2002
Now here's a situation I don't enjoy.
1.) Software company marketing schmoe promises end users "increased functionality and interoperability" in "the next version" of their software, and gives the impression that people will save hours web-enabling content created by the company's desktop software. 2.) "The next version" rolls around, and "increased functionality and interoperability" means, "if you buy our new extension, you'll save 30 minutes by creating proprietary files from our product in place of the XML files you were creating in an extra step before". 3.) Expectant user community asks web developer to get excited about and show them all those hours they're going to save.
The story usually ends with the developer either giving them a white lie and saying, "There is no increased interoperability" or with the developer taking several opportunities over the next month to meet with each user of the desktop software and explain over and over that their dreams have been dashed on the rocks and that they (and by "they" we don't mean the royal they) will lose the ability to customize their web content like they did before. And they'll've paid extra for it.
Reminds me a little too much of a Visual Basic wizard. It'll do 70% of what you'd want a good app to do in an afternoon, but the last 30% will take longer to develop using the wizard than it would have to have done it all from scratch to begin with by a factor of about four.
Did I make that too esoteric and situation specific? More succinctly...
1.) Third-party marketer promises end users the world. 2.) Third-party software has a hard time delivering The Bowery. 3.) Developer whose job is the customize third-party software has many angry end users on his hands because his (or her) skillz apparently ain't up to the marketer's promises.
Any way you look at it, it means extra work for your friendly neighborhood developer.
posted by ruffin
at 8/09/2002 04:11:00 PM
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