God, I hope so. Lotus Notes is a beast. It stops working whenever it feels like it, and occasionally corrupts the database just to make your day.
Sing it brother! I am daily poked in the eye by Notus Lotes clumsy and slow interface that takes a bafflingly long time to draw (baffling b/c as such an old app written on much slower hardware, the UI should be blazingly fast on a 2.4 Ghz machine). As of 6.x, they still don't have a decent scroll widget!
The teamrooms (the content management component) are all but unusuable--impossible to usefully search (and why doesn't it search the content of attached documents? My team only writes a scant subject and dumps in some word file as an attachment), and clumsy at best for managing recent changes. I also hate the "widgetized" Notes docs, with the tabs and buttons and other such rubbish; it's not that I'm opposed to widgets, it's that the content is not the star in the Notes pageant, Notes is.
I own stock in IBM and I can't wait until they pull plug on this gross abuse of computering resources!
(plug for my favorite wiki: DokuWiki . Elegant interface, trivial to setup and use.)
I have to disagree. I loved the Cryptonomicon (which I read first), but found Snow Crash... juvenile. My friends adored the book so I read it to page 100, then gave it back (and this is knowing that that "ultimate badass" passage was coming up--hilarious in the retelling). It probably has more to do with my disinterest in the cyberpunk genre in general, but Crypto is far and away his best and most accessible book (I'm midway through Quicksilver).
Settle down there, Spitfire. I used to hate Real for all the reasons everyone mentions (over and over again). But software and corporations are not religions. Real Player 10 is much less intrusive than the (seemingly) beloved Quicktime, and for the streams I listen to (http://www.kexp.org) it has the best quality sound. Plus, it has a great interface, and... it's Free. Free as in Real gave away a chunk of code the "community", and free as in, "you didn't pay for this, so you can expect an ad or two".
And while I'm on my rant, what's with all the posts getting modded up that ask the inane question, "Why don't you sell non-DRM music?" Is this an inside joke?
Lotus Notes 6 doesn't recognize Windows directory shortcuts either. I think this an issue with any widget kit that does not bind to Windows native widgets or use native dialogs (I beleive Notes has its own gui toolkit).
I listen to indie rock almost exclusively, and while Rhapsody has many of the bands I'm interested in, some that are available through iTunes are not available through Real Music Store (e.g. The Shins, Helio Sequence).
How is new music is added the Music Store, and can individual artists add their music without major label backing?
How about this: _I_ don't need internationalization. I think maximum flexibility and accessibility are fantastic, necessary. However, if it were possible to get a faster version of whatever that didn't support wacky characters, or crazy formatting, I would be all over it. I'm never going to use the Fahrvegnugen translation, so why is it necessary that my desktop instance support it? Which brings to mind another nit I have with Gnome: the combo on the file browser that has character encoding options. Why would I, arrogant English speaker, ever need to change the encoding of file names in the file chooser? To put it another way, I've never, in my 20 years of using a computer, used this "feature". It doesn't eat up gobs of memory, or chew on the cpu, but it's wrong to put it on the GUI!
I'm a Notes hater myself, and required to use for every kind of task, for none of which is it the right tool for the job. Slow for email, rubbish for document sharing (why doesn't it search the content of stored docs?), heavy, and a weird UI to boot (what is with the scrollbar?). And yes, much of IBM internal is dependent on IE (doggone that awful travel application), sometimes just for the MS JVM--what is that about? IBM _writes its own JRE_, why not stick that into lumbering jalopy that is Notus Lotes. No one would even notice.
I got the latest RealPlayer for both Linux and Windows, and I find that the clarity is better than streaming mp3 or wmv (I listen to http://www.kexp.org/ or http://www.wbur.org/). The Linux version has no ads and functions like the best of Gnome software (simple interface, reliable function), and the Windows version has yet to bombard me with any ad-ware (admittedly a _huge_ problem in earlier version). The Windows interface is far from horrible--in fact, I'd say it was "very good".
They're just a company, not a religion, and they make a great product.
I'll agree with your primitive type issue, but the rest is rubbish. Java can be occasionally confining, but for 98% of the code I write (not super sexy video games, admittedly), it does a much better than average job of aiding good OO design (addressing OO-hating I save for some other post). I might be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, but my Java captor makes it very easy to build programs that are easily understood from their class constructs. Strong typing constraints allows you to hand off your crap code to some maintainer 4 generations down the line and know they won't be passing an int id (instead of ObjectType) that will unexpectedly blow up the system 20 hours into a run. Or better yet, simplify the inevitable refactoring that occurs while the code is in my care.
limited ability to write any abstractions that don't fit a very narrow paradigm
This one has always puzzled me. I'm sure I'm just simple, but while Java may not have the most smallest (I'm thinking of Perl and the programming contest) or most elegant solution to the problem, its "bloated" class libraries and prodigious and powerful tools (think Eclipse) make things as easy and more maintainable (thinking Perl again).
On Slashdot, Java suffers more from being "most popular" than for any real world deficiencies. Eat my shorts.
I done a few OS projects, and my experience is that UI issues are _not_ a technical problem, but "work" problem. Essentially, UI work (feel free to include useful Help docs) can take more than half the time of (at least) the first full release of the project. Here the problem isn't even the actual effort, but the intellectual challenge. If I'm working for free, building an application/plugin for myself essentially (often as a learning exercise), I'm just not willing to burn my weekends making things work just right.
As an example, I recently put in a simple infix calculator for a textbox on a GUI (I looked high and low for an existing Java impl, but I think the fact that it's an assignment in every CS101 class accounts for its scarcity...). I stopped where the parsing was easy; I know _I'm_ not going to put in the wrong format. It's not for lack of knowing how an intuitive UI should behave--I consider myself an expert; I just don't feel like busting my hump solely for the "good of mankind".
As an American in England for the past few months, I was a little skeptical about Britain's growing use of CCTV being in the public interest. After a couple months seeing the number of crimes that were solved in a pretty short amount of time (one that comes to mind is the Huntley case), I now believe they really are a force for good. I don't know if they're a deterrent to the heinous body snatching-type crimes, but I definitely feel they make some of the sketchier areas of the city safer. Hoodlums are less likely to practice their intimidation tactics when small crimes are no longer anonymous (I think Britain has issues with punk kids who "smash and dash" or worse).
I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of gov't peering into my home (the infrared peekaboo case comes to mind), but you are a public person in the public space, and CCTV is actually a very small price to pay for the benefit of many fewer "broken windows".
I remember my first project using ClearCase: each checkout and checkin was followed by a GPF dialogue suggesting I reboot the computer. The Rational guy just said it was "normal behaviour" (we were, after all, still able to check in/out). I haven't seen that in my recent run-ins with CC, but Rational GUIs have been some of the worst designed POS on the market. Their software pricing is extortionate, and they couldn't bother to do a little user testing, or even come up with a unified L&F across their very expensive applications.
What was really annoying was that seemingly the only solid piece of the Rational Suite was the license client! Real project time was spent (requiring a Rational expert) sorting out license issues just so we could use a product we'd already purchased.
I should say that recent moves to integrate with WSAD and the Eclipse platform seem to have cured many of the UI issues, but I too have always wondered if they were using the RUP, and if they were, if this is the quality it produces, what good is it?
Re:Can I have an infinite budget to write the code
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I haven't used the document tree, and as I mentioned to a sibling post, I haven't had much experience with Swing recently. But: while getting the hang of layouts can be tricky, I think that this really is a task best left to one of the many GUI editors out there. The problem with tools, I'm sure you'll agree, is that they produce ugly code, but cleaning up usually takes way less time than doing the layout math by hand.
I realize this is a pretty poor apology for Swing, but the fact is I've found it to be basically ok, well documented, and the Web is riddled with example code if there's something particularly knotty (or unintuitive) to work out. I can, however, appreciate the pleasure of working with well crafted tools (as I suggested in the other post, the Eclipse IDE is my current favorite scalpel), so even though I'm basically a Gnome guy, based yours and the sibling's posts recommendation, I'll take a crack at this Qt stuff;).
Re:Can I have an infinite budget to write the code
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To be honest I haven't done a ton of Swing lately (I think it's too slow on a 1.6Ghz T40)--for the little GUI projects that I do I use SWT. Much faster and native look and all that. So while my recollection of Swing development may be a bit dim, I'm familiar with working with a new GUI toolkit.
SWT has it's own layout manager similar to GridBagLayout in Swing. At first it seems like complete rubbish, but after a while it makes sense. The point, though, really, is that GUI development can be a PITA and if you get a decent editor such as Jigloo, you can get stuff to look 85% right without having to do a lot of layout math.
Incidentally, I didn't actually expect you to respond;). I think I even hit the problem you describe, of creating (in my case a generic template) dialog. The content pane where the message or business widget or whatever would show was always cut off by the button pane, despite doing essentially what you did.
I'd actually like to do some Linux desktop development, but my expertise is in Java and as an Eclipse fanboy, I'm pretty much committed to SWT for the near future.
Re:Can I have an infinite budget to write the code
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How? Without examples, your post is essentially a troll. I'm far from Swing's biggest fan (though I have an enormous appreciation for Java after starting out in C++), but throwing together a reasonably complex GUI either by hand or with one of the many (more than QT) visual editors is not hard.
I'm not opposed to capitalization for clarity, and taking in the follow-on comments would change the class to:
class Name{ private: string name; Name(string name) { this.name = name }
The point here is not that you wouldn't want to have a class name different only in capitalization from an instance var, but that you would never (because of the confusion it would cause to humans) do:
I'll grant this example of a curiosity of scientific language, but I think it is the exception that proves the rule (the rule being that we should be case-insensitive, and prove, I think being "test"). Most laymen confuse these terms to the point where many texts (I'm thinking the back of food boxes) use kcal instead.
That that wouldn't be to much more descriptive to a layman, come to think of it.
What I want to know is: what is the point of system/language significant case-sensitivity at all? Is there ever a case in code for having to terms indentical except for capitalization? This is one of Windows' file systems (I think this is where it lives) advantages over Unix. I know you can turn it off, but it should institutionally removed (and from Java and XML too, since that's what I work in and it has never helped me and too frequently caused hidden problems).
Just to be clear, I like capitalization as a human, I just want everything in computerdom evaluated equalsIgnoreCase.
This has got to be the most annoying thing working for a very large corporation heavily invested in Java and Linux (at least in the server space). I can't use a non-IE browser to run our corporate applets (timesheets, travel reservations, as you say). The only non-IE browser you can use is Netscape 4, which is, well Netscape 4. Because of all the marketing surrounding our use of Java and its crossplatform potential (which is absolutely true except in this case), this kind of thing really gets my goat.
This is pure speculation, but I suspect Moore would be raving Barker regardless of renumeration. He shows all the attributes of a zealot, and while he also has affection for the spotlight, I've no doubt he'd be making his American Movie regardless of the size of his audience. You can make a lot of claims about Moore, but saying he "does it for the money" seems a little far fetched.
I'm not a huge Moore fan, btw. I've only seen Bowling for Columbine, but found it entertaining and thought-provoking (in spite of the creative editing).
And doesn't it bother you that Michael Moore is personally getting very, very rich out of September 11th?
Why should it be a sin to make money from political commentary, be it focused on Sept 11th, May 3rd, or any of the other 365 days of the year? Many celebrities (news and enterntainment) make a good living from stories based on momentous world events, Moore has a right to do the same.
I don't know if I agree in the particulars, but I'm definitely with you in general (or the other way around... I can't decide). The one that particularly bugs me is "freshmeat.org". I know I'm getting old, but in spite of the fact that it seems to be the site of record for announcements of new/updated projects, I have to look down to mention it to somebody. They definitely have the l33t hax0rs angle down, but I wish it were perfectly mirrored (and appropriately rebadged) to "newstuff.org" or "hotsoftware.net" or something more adult...
At the same time, I do enjoy the in jokes as much as the next guy (your "less"es adn "PINE"s), and christined my own project with a clever-though-not-very-descriptive name, which then requires explanation for anyone who wants to use it. Must be left over creative energy from all those band names I cooked up in junior high for bands I never played in....
Right on Brother! And as for the Gimp's "flawed" interface (I found it a bit odd the first few times I used it), the first time I used Photoshop, it took a bit of time to get the hang of its interface. The thing about the Gimp is, it's easily the 70% solution. It may not be a professional's weapon of choice, but I've never found its limits in any of the tasks I've put it to. My brother pays for Photoshop to use this same functionality available for free in the Gimp--more power to him, but I think free is worth the cost of learning a new interface.
I have only one complaint: I wish it had a "draw box" button. The process I use now is pretty cumbersome.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no way Winamp could wrest that prize from Lotus Notes. "Feature" for feature, Notes stands like a Colossus of crap UI design.
Todd
Sing it brother! I am daily poked in the eye by Notus Lotes clumsy and slow interface that takes a bafflingly long time to draw (baffling b/c as such an old app written on much slower hardware, the UI should be blazingly fast on a 2.4 Ghz machine). As of 6.x, they still don't have a decent scroll widget!
The teamrooms (the content management component) are all but unusuable--impossible to usefully search (and why doesn't it search the content of attached documents? My team only writes a scant subject and dumps in some word file as an attachment), and clumsy at best for managing recent changes. I also hate the "widgetized" Notes docs, with the tabs and buttons and other such rubbish; it's not that I'm opposed to widgets, it's that the content is not the star in the Notes pageant, Notes is.
I own stock in IBM and I can't wait until they pull plug on this gross abuse of computering resources!
(plug for my favorite wiki: DokuWiki . Elegant interface, trivial to setup and use.)
I have to disagree. I loved the Cryptonomicon (which I read first), but found Snow Crash... juvenile. My friends adored the book so I read it to page 100, then gave it back (and this is knowing that that "ultimate badass" passage was coming up--hilarious in the retelling). It probably has more to do with my disinterest in the cyberpunk genre in general, but Crypto is far and away his best and most accessible book (I'm midway through Quicksilver).
No thanks needed,
Todd
And while I'm on my rant, what's with all the posts getting modded up that ask the inane question, "Why don't you sell non-DRM music?" Is this an inside joke?
Lotus Notes 6 doesn't recognize Windows directory shortcuts either. I think this an issue with any widget kit that does not bind to Windows native widgets or use native dialogs (I beleive Notes has its own gui toolkit).
How is new music is added the Music Store, and can individual artists add their music without major label backing?
That's my 2p.
Phew. Just had to get that off my chest.
They're just a company, not a religion, and they make a great product.
limited ability to write any abstractions that don't fit a very narrow paradigm
This one has always puzzled me. I'm sure I'm just simple, but while Java may not have the most smallest (I'm thinking of Perl and the programming contest) or most elegant solution to the problem, its "bloated" class libraries and prodigious and powerful tools (think Eclipse) make things as easy and more maintainable (thinking Perl again).
On Slashdot, Java suffers more from being "most popular" than for any real world deficiencies. Eat my shorts.
As an example, I recently put in a simple infix calculator for a textbox on a GUI (I looked high and low for an existing Java impl, but I think the fact that it's an assignment in every CS101 class accounts for its scarcity...). I stopped where the parsing was easy; I know _I'm_ not going to put in the wrong format. It's not for lack of knowing how an intuitive UI should behave--I consider myself an expert; I just don't feel like busting my hump solely for the "good of mankind".
I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of gov't peering into my home (the infrared peekaboo case comes to mind), but you are a public person in the public space, and CCTV is actually a very small price to pay for the benefit of many fewer "broken windows".
What was really annoying was that seemingly the only solid piece of the Rational Suite was the license client! Real project time was spent (requiring a Rational expert) sorting out license issues just so we could use a product we'd already purchased.
I should say that recent moves to integrate with WSAD and the Eclipse platform seem to have cured many of the UI issues, but I too have always wondered if they were using the RUP, and if they were, if this is the quality it produces, what good is it?
I realize this is a pretty poor apology for Swing, but the fact is I've found it to be basically ok, well documented, and the Web is riddled with example code if there's something particularly knotty (or unintuitive) to work out. I can, however, appreciate the pleasure of working with well crafted tools (as I suggested in the other post, the Eclipse IDE is my current favorite scalpel), so even though I'm basically a Gnome guy, based yours and the sibling's posts recommendation, I'll take a crack at this Qt stuff ;).
To be honest I haven't done a ton of Swing lately (I think it's too slow on a 1.6Ghz T40)--for the little GUI projects that I do I use SWT. Much faster and native look and all that. So while my recollection of Swing development may be a bit dim, I'm familiar with working with a new GUI toolkit.
SWT has it's own layout manager similar to GridBagLayout in Swing. At first it seems like complete rubbish, but after a while it makes sense. The point, though, really, is that GUI development can be a PITA and if you get a decent editor such as Jigloo, you can get stuff to look 85% right without having to do a lot of layout math.
Incidentally, I didn't actually expect you to respond ;). I think I even hit the problem you describe, of creating (in my case a generic template) dialog. The content pane where the message or business widget or whatever would show was always cut off by the button pane, despite doing essentially what you did.
I'd actually like to do some Linux desktop development, but my expertise is in Java and as an Eclipse fanboy, I'm pretty much committed to SWT for the near future.
How? Without examples, your post is essentially a troll. I'm far from Swing's biggest fan (though I have an enormous appreciation for Java after starting out in C++), but throwing together a reasonably complex GUI either by hand or with one of the many (more than QT) visual editors is not hard.
That that wouldn't be to much more descriptive to a layman, come to think of it.
Just to be clear, I like capitalization as a human, I just want everything in computerdom evaluated equalsIgnoreCase.
This has got to be the most annoying thing working for a very large corporation heavily invested in Java and Linux (at least in the server space). I can't use a non-IE browser to run our corporate applets (timesheets, travel reservations, as you say). The only non-IE browser you can use is Netscape 4, which is, well Netscape 4. Because of all the marketing surrounding our use of Java and its crossplatform potential (which is absolutely true except in this case), this kind of thing really gets my goat.
I'm not a huge Moore fan, btw. I've only seen Bowling for Columbine, but found it entertaining and thought-provoking (in spite of the creative editing).
Why should it be a sin to make money from political commentary, be it focused on Sept 11th, May 3rd, or any of the other 365 days of the year? Many celebrities (news and enterntainment) make a good living from stories based on momentous world events, Moore has a right to do the same.
At the same time, I do enjoy the in jokes as much as the next guy (your "less"es adn "PINE"s), and christined my own project with a clever-though-not-very-descriptive name, which then requires explanation for anyone who wants to use it. Must be left over creative energy from all those band names I cooked up in junior high for bands I never played in....
I have only one complaint: I wish it had a "draw box" button. The process I use now is pretty cumbersome.