| last updated:23 Feb 2004 15:51 UK time |
 |
| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 22 Feb 2004) | View Other Weeks |
| Microsoft CRM Server | Sun 22 Feb | Chris Ormerod |
| We received licences for MS CRM as part of our Partner package this year and so far the sales department and the tech support guys have had a play with it and all agree that it beats hands down our current system which consists of: 1. Act! 6 for the sales guys and 2. A homegrown support app written in ASP.Net and based heavily on the FogBugz UI and Case driven mentality. We have been looking for a system to tie the sales and support guys together for a while and this is the first one we have seen that looks like it could prove to be the replacement. But we have some questions: 1. Has anybody used the MS CRM Server 1.2 in a production sales environment for any period of time? 2. How did you find it compared to your previous solution? (What was your previous solution?) 3. Have you used it in a tech support environment? 4. Has anybody had experience tieing a licencing routine into the backend (or doing any custom work on it)? We have a setup in our program much like the FogBugz licence input form picks up how many users you have through an automated query based on your invoice number - we currently have this running through our custom support app and CRM would have to support this somehow. 5. (The killer) Has anybody had any luck importing their Act! data into the MS CRM program? I spent half a day looking at the data migration framework supplied with it and from what I can tell, I am going to have to write an app to massage the Act data into a compatible format ready to put in the import staging databases ready for upload. Is this the correct mentality or is their an easier way? |
| Sun 22 Feb | GiorgioG | Before singing praise for MS CRM 1.2, make sure you can do something as simple as replicating data for offline use. My job this coming week is to figure out why replication for our sales reps is not working for anyone.
I wrote an internal data migration application for MS CRM 1.0 back when we implemented it - using .NET and their accompanying 'SDK' which was semi-painful. We were pulling data in from our internally written Lotus Notes/Domino system.
Our previous system, Lotus Notes/Domino was sufficient, but did not integrate with our newly installed MS Solomon financials package. The company has pledged it's life to Microsoft recently (away from IBM.) Overall, MS CRM is still a 1.0 Microsoft product and will not be the most robust, flexible, easy to maintain system. With regards to the offline usage, Lotus Notes/Domino makes it extremely simple to do. Whereas in MS CRM, the replication system is not yet mature. In fact, I'm going to have to go in Query Analyzer and run some stored procedures and the likes to get it work - supposedly, from a CRM knowledgebase article I found. That aside, the product works well. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Laurel | 'The company has pledged it's life to Microsoft recentl' Time to sell your stock |
| Sun 22 Feb | Chris Ormerod | Thanks for that info GiorgioG, Apparently the Sales for Outlook addin gives us the offline ability right in outlook2003 but we haven't got that far into testing it out yet - we have just been evaluating the server side of it so far. Obviously we still have a lot to go over before we did implement it and if we do implement it we would trial it in 'real life' for a little while just to make sure it worked as advertised. This message was more just to gather others experiences with it to make sure we weren't wasting our time even looking at it. Offline isn't the top priority in our case as we only have 2 or 3 people who sometimes (once every 2 months or so at the moment) need offline ability anyway but obviously it will become necessary so thanks for pointing that out. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Chris Ormerod | And having CRM web based rather than desktop bound like Act! may need we don't need Offline anyway. Chris. |
| CMM & Off-Shore | Sun 22 Feb | Anon this time |
| ... I just read another white-paper by an off-shore provider claiming to be CMMi 5 and PCMM 5 and Six Sigma. Having read the 768-page implementation guides to CMMi and browsed the rest, knowing when CMMi came out (2002?) and when these companies began chasing CMM (generally 1998 or so) ... ... Is it just me, or are some of these CMM level 5 companies completely bogus? Seriousy, CMMi requires an intensely, heavyweight, documented process structure that must be built from the ground up over a period of years. Then these companies come in and say oh, yeah, we got Cmmi5 last week ... I just dont buy it, especially when there is not true audit system in place for CMMi. Thoughts? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Oh? | I think a more pertinent question would be is how well do these companies maintain their CMM 5 status, given the nature of the industry that they are in. What I mean is that it's hard enough for IT/IS shops to turn out internal applications when they work in the same company, understand the business and work closely with each other. Now throw in the issues that off-shoring brings and try to do it under CMM Level 5. That's gotta be difficult to do since CMM 5 has such stringent change control procedures and now we've introduced some level of 'static' in the communication between client and development shop. I dunno..I've not worked in a CMM 5 company, nor do I have much experience working with an off-shore company. My gut reaction makes me wonder how they do it. |
| Strawman terminology: "expert C++ programmer?" | Sun 22 Feb | Bored Bystander |
| This topic was posted to another board by a recruiter who was lamenting the lack of responsive candidates for a job: http://pub21.ezboard.com/fopenitforumfrm8.showMessage?topicID=328.topic >> With all the pain and suffering going on in the I.T. world - you would think itd be rather easy to locate some top C++ talent. Wouldnt you? >> Well the reality is not the case. >> Many of the guys I run into are still living in an illusion. >> Wont even get off their couch for a chance at making 70-80K this year. >> Unbelievable. What emerges later in this thread is that: the $70-$80K is actually a contract rate of $35-$45/hr somewhere in Indiana, US; and what the recruiter really means by expert and top talent is someone able to develop C++ applications without supervision or training. Just a reality check, now: what does anyone here think that top talent or expert really mean? And is the reluctance of some qualified candidates to consider a mediocre rate on a contract position that probably requires relocation an indication of terminal laziness or poor character? My feeling is that some people want to protect their salary history and not work for wankers who consider someone an expert who simply meets nominal job qualifications. Just wanted to see what the folks here thought. Cheers. |
| Sun 22 Feb | T. Norman | A real 'expert' wouldn't accept $35-40 per hour. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Curious | Why not? Seems like it would be better, in many cases, than getting nothing. Not trying to be a smartarse. I'm not a contractor and don't have any insight into what represents a choice assignment. Just wondering what the thought process is. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Sum Dum Gai | 'A real 'expert' wouldn't accept $35-40 per hour.' Why not? What if the job is something they really love doing and they're willing to work for less money than they might otherwise be able to command? Or are experts only found amoung those solely motivated by money? Additionally, it may be that someone is an expert, but very poor at selling themselves, and hence is unable to command a greater rate. I think it's foolish to make blanket statements about how much an expert would cost. |
| Sun 22 Feb | no name | Let's get out of the bullshit IT world that's been destroyed by moron recruiters, pimps, outsourcers and business hacks for a minute. An expert in a profesional field means someone recognised to be at the top of their field, probably 40 or older, numerous achievements. Probably good position. Poeple like this do not work for $40 per hour. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dan Brown | openIT forum is poisonous, I recommend staying away and not listening or believing anything that gets said in there. |
| Sun 22 Feb | no name | Why, Dan? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dan Brown | Short and sweet: It's very important to keep good company, and that forum is full of whiners and complainers. A lot longer: Aristotle's conception of Eudaimonia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia |
| Sun 22 Feb | Mark Hoffman | If I had been out of work for years, with no foreseeable prospects then I think I would take whatever rate I could get just to feed my children. ..however...If I were just in a slump, I wouldn't take a $35-$40 job, even if I had nothing else lined up. One reason is that I wouldn't want to be tied down to a low paying contract when something better comes in. The other reasoning is that I simply am not interested in working for that rate. I'd rather spend the time working on growing my business, learning new skills or just spending time with my family rather than sloshing out code at $35/hour for someone who is likely to be a royal pain in the arse to deal with, given the low rate they pay. Of course, given enough time with no business and one has to re-evaluate their market price. |
| bookkeeping for mobile macintosh professional? | Sun 22 Feb | |
| hi, I recently ended my glamorous career as an IT systems programmer and have switched over to becoming a filmer/producer of video clips. My production kit is based on an apple powerbook. Im trying to keep the number of non-media-production apps at a minimum. One issue Im running into is that I dont know what a decent accounting package is for the mac. Im considering purchasing a windows laptop for running quickbooks, but I have to travel a lot and would rather not carry 2 laptops. Most of my mac-head friends say the version of quickbooks for the macintosh is not worth using. does anyone have any other suggestions for macintosh accounting software? also, another idea I had was to see if there is a palm-pilot based accounting package. I do like the idea of dedicating my powerbook to final cut pro and logic, and having my accounting package run somewhere else, but would rather not carry about 2 laptops. carrying a palm pilot wouldnt be so bad, though. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Mike | This is a good package. My father uses MYOB on Windows, he started with it on the Mac though. The Mac stuff is now called Account Edge or First Edge for on without payroll and inventory. http://www.myob.com/us/products/ |
| Creating docs/specs as first/final versions | Sun 22 Feb | Philip Dickerson |
| I recently acquired a copy of the book How to Write Fast (While Writing Well) by David Fryxell (1992). Its not a book I normally would have bought for myself, but someone at work was giving away some older books from his collection, and this looked interesting - I frequently write specs, proposals, articles, etc and sometimes I struggle with them. One chapter in particular has been very interesting to me - Writing a first draft right from the start. This is helping me to realize that it is a desirable skill to write a document that needs a relatively small amount of revising rather than, as seems to be often recommended, to repeatedly re-write the document with major revisions. I find that the times when I can write a document from start to finish (in the flow) which only needs a small amount of revising, it is a much better document than when I go through several major rewrites. This has always seemed to contradict most teaching that seems to recommend writing down lists of points, then an outline, then several drafts with lots of changes all before writing the final perfect copy. But now this book is showing me that my natural instinct of writing a first draft as the final version is good and should be encouraged. Of course, doing this requires more than just the desire to sit down and write, and the earlier chapters in the book help with this - getting organized, doing prior research on your selected topics, keeping your topics and notes mentally gathered, etc - somewhat like doing the rough drafts in your mind rather than on paper. If youre interested, the book listing at Amazon is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0898797381 (And no, Im not associated with the book or author in any way.) |
| Sun 22 Feb | Aussie Chick | >This has always seemed to contradict most teaching that seems to recommend writing down lists of points, then an outline, then several drafts with lots of changes all before writing the final 'perfect' copy. All through highschool I refused to do drafts, the best I would ever do was to scrawl down a few points to give me directions. I thought I was just plain lazy, it turns out I was doing things the smart way.... Actually I find this very interesting, I am about to write the documentation for my little program, it is a daunting task, the type of task that I want to keep putting off, If I thought I would be writing numerous drafts and revisions etc, it would be hard for me to get started, and I know for sure that I would cheat as much as possible so that I could get it over and done with. |
| my career | Sun 22 Feb | PSA |
| I am a bit confused with my career.my 3 12/ years of experience involved java/c++ with databases(oracle in major,SQL server).i also have an experience in working on oracle express which is a multidimensional database.I am comfortable working with jsp/servlets , RMI, etc..This is my last companys exposure/experience Now from last 18 months or so i am into Java GUI development and java application programming using Core java.I am not really fancied with GUI Development.I am a profound interest in Databases primarily db design , db tuning,etc but i also like programming so its not that i want to orient my career path on the lines of a dba or so.Now i am in a dilemna as to what should i do ? Should i leave my current job and look for something which has always fancied me and was of my interest.Also leaving my current job is kind of difficult since its paying me very well and i wonder if i can find something else which will pay me at pare or better in my city. Please flow in some suggestions for me thanks PSA |
| Sun 22 Feb | RP | With things the way they are, you want to add as many skills to your resume as you can. When you have your own company you can think about doing whatever fancies you. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Brad Wilson | The answer depends on what you want to do with your life. If you want to be a professional software engineer with your life, then you better get over this idea that you're going to specialize in one thing, especially something like databases. The fact is, you need a cross-section of skills to be useful. When you go up for a job, your database-only desires will be put up against general purpose candidates who can also do the required database work, and nobody's going to employ you. Get a PC at home, and play with databases to your heart's content. At work, get as many skills as you can so you can be useful in ALL situations, not just the ones primarily concerned with databases. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dennis Forbes | I respectfully disagree with the prior postings. My personal perception has been that vast general skills (i.e. 'jack of all trades, master of none'), such was the rage during the .COM boom, are not enough in the current environment. Instead you need to demonstrate excellence at one core area, whether it's extraordinary database skills (as a sidenote--the overwhelming majority of databases designed by such generalists are horrible), guru skills with .NET interop, whatever. I'd rather build a team comprised of a collection of complimentary experts, with each having a realm of ownership, rather than a set of general purpose developers. There are countless applicants who'll list a litany of skills, each of which they can talk about in general terms. There are very, very few applicants who can demonstrate expert knowledge in one area. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Immature programmer | And exactly how does one demonstrate excellence in one core area? Do most employers care whether an applicant is 'excellent', or do they look at bullet points + years of experience? Dennis, I don't disagree with you. But you probably don't represent most employers. |
| Sun 22 Feb | veal | I understand where you're coming from Dennis. Having superficial experience with a technology is worth almost nothing, because other candidates can acquire that level of skill quickly. On the other hand, I've gotten lucrative gigs and broken new accounts by having just a little skill with technologies so obscure that the clients couldn't find *anyone* else who had used them. But that's very rare, and probably not worth pursuing as a general strategy. But becoming a guru on just one thing -- or a few things -- proves dangerous as that one thing falls out of use. Plus, a breadth of experience gives you a broader base of ideas to draw from in solving problems. Obviously the best route is to become a 'jack of all trades, master of most'. :-) Personally, I'll always hire the person with the broad experience over the guru of one thing, unless I need a 2-month contractor. The one point I'd like to make to the original poster is that it is generally a very bad idea to choose jobs based on salary early in your career. Your chief goal should be to gain good experiences during that period and do yourself no harm. If you steer your career properly during those early years to gain rich and varied professional experiences, any meager salary differences you momentarily denied yourself you will recoup twentyfold or more over the course of your career because of the opportunities those experiences will open up for you. And of course the most important thing is to follow your passion. If you see a job that will provide opportunities you crave, take it at all costs. You will never regret doing work you love when it's available, and you can always resume your old path should the exciting opportunity dry up. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dennis Forbes | 'And exactly how does one demonstrate excellence in one core area? Do most employers care whether an applicant is 'excellent', or do they look at bullet points + years of experience?' This is where cover letters come into play -- clearly identifying your focus on a key, important part of the development process can really grab someone's attention. Most teams are full of lots of people with lots of supposed skills, but in the end the majority are piss poor at all of them. One of the reasons Microsoft is deprecating COM in favour of .NET for distributed computing is that despite millions of 'DNA' programmers, _extremely_ few (well under 1%) have any idea what they're doing in COM+/MTS (i.e. actually understanding and implementing security and transactions across COM objects). In this case perhaps representing yourself to a firm as a guru of COM objects would get you interest. 'Dennis, I don't disagree with you. But you probably don't represent most employers.' Oh I have no doubt that most employers look for bullet lists, but remember that most prospective employees are providing bullet lists -- saying 'there are 10,000 jobs for the general skills people' is incompletely job hunting information if there are 10,000,000 general skills people spamming resumes. I'm talking about those few employers who respect experts, despite the job advert that might include a laundry list of technologies -- From submissions that I've seen, there are dramatically fewer specialists. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Brad Wilson | If you want to be heavily focused on small areas, like becoming a database guru, then I would say the best thing to do would be to become a consultant/contractor. When people look for specialists, this is the route they're going to take, and you'll be able to bill for more money than you'd get as a general employee. It's pretty risky, though, and requires you to be a good sales person (selling yourself) and a good networker (making contacts so you can get contracts), in addition to the extreme time you'd spend become a guru-level person. Definitely not the track I'd recommend for the general person, but some could make a very good living at it. |
| Sun 22 Feb | no name | Dennis, there's a difference between being an expert and getting hired. The poster is asking about getting hired. Deep expertise is NOT the thing that's get you hired, unless you're going for a job with Microsoft. |
| Sun 22 Feb | x | My question: do you want to be marketable to the largest sheer number of jobs or the jobs where there are relatively few, but highly specialized, openings. Frankly, I chose the latter: there are maybe 500 openings in the world in my particular field of small embedded- systems database engines, but maybe 250 people with the relevant experience and skill-sets to apply. The field is small enough that most people in it know each other. I was briefly unemployed in 2001 after my last company disintegrated, and I gave thought to learning Java and becoming a 'generalist'. (I've spent most of my career doing C and db engines of various sizes.) After a quick glance at various resumes and realizing that Java work was clearly a commodity prone to outsourcing, I abandoned that thought and quickly found work at a startup, that is now starting to take off. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Brad Wilson | Sure, but now let's be specific. Nobody hires an expert database developer any more. Especially when we're talking about MSSQL, which is relatively good at optimizing itself, and easy for devs to install and admin... it just seems entirely unwise to bet the farm on that. Embedded development expert != person who doesn't want to do anything besides SQL development |
| Sun 22 Feb | Mike | 'Especially when we're talking about MSSQL' Which is why if you want to be a consultant pick some hairy difficult to understand relative to Microsoft pap product and learn it inside and out. To put it anothe way. Learn a skill most companies don't have in house. Open Road for example. This next statement is not ment to reflect on the OP or anyone else here, just a general comment about the way things are: It always amazes me the time noobs will spend on dotnet or some other IT commodity. Don't pick a commodity skill. That's why a brain surgeon commands higher prices than a general practicioner. If you have a particular niche technology you are interested in go for it. You can always be a commodity coder. |
| Sun 22 Feb | x | I was offering a personal anecdote, not trying to compare to the OP. But I agree: career management is tricky nowadays. Be too 'general' and you run the risk of having 6 months experience in each of 25 technologies, 20 of which are obsolete, and you're constantly competing with hordes of freshly-minted script-kiddies. Be too 'specific', and your skill-set may become completely useless with a small shift in technology. I'm definitely more at risk here. So, the real answer may be to figure out what you _like_ doing, and damn the market (at least to an extent). But save every penny and be ready for shifts and downturns. |
| Sun 22 Feb | no name | And, if you're one of ten experts in your field in the world, DON'T work for $50 per hour. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dan Brown | People's lack of broad experience shining through? Some companies want generalists. Some companies want specialists. More companies want generalists, and as a result more employees market themselves as generalists. There's a time when you need somebody that can set up the website, database, and client. There's a time when you need somebody that has 10 years of experience tuning Oracle queries. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Laurel | Stay away from MS technologies and you will do fine. |
| Sun 22 Feb | one programmer's opinion | Essentially everybody is correct is some manner. The following is how I have seen things breakdown: * Some companies looking to hire a salaried employee want a generalist. * Some companies looking to hire a salaried employee want a specialist. * Most hiring managers looking to hire a contractor want a specialist. The above scenarios is one reason why many 'salaried employees who are generalists' have a hard time landing a contracting gig and one reason why many 'contractors who are specialists' have a hard time landing a full-time salaried position or another contracting gig using a different programming language. |
| Bizarre tax silliness | Sun 22 Feb | Philo |
| The year I left the military I was supposed to file a partial year return with my current state of residence at that time. I didnt know this until I got a tax bill for the entire years income from that state. So I got an old copy of Turbotax State, filled in the blanks from my federal return, and sent it off. A few weeks ago I got the return back noting it was incomplete since I didnt attach my W-2 forms. Okay, bear with me now - obviously they know how much I made, since they sent me the tax bill, so why do I have to attach the forms? In fact, the same is true of Federal returns (tho not with e-filed returns) - the one form you are required to attach is the one form that your employer is required to file with the government. Its also the form that increases your tax obligation - you dont have to attach proof for any of the reductions in your tax obligation. Ah, the joys of weve always done it that way. Philo |
| Sun 22 Feb | Jason | 'we've always done it that way' is probably right, but it's possible that having a copy of the w-2 gives them something to check their electronic copies against for fraud or mistakes there was a good show on Frontline last week about the elaborate tax dodges used by corporations, which the IRS is powerless to prosecute, even though they account for a much bigger loss than anything us wee individual taxpayers might pull off |
| Sun 22 Feb | Nick | When I was in the Army 18 years ago, I never got a W-2 for any of the years I served. The Company Commander never mentioned anything about taxes, so being young and naive, I assumed that members of the armed forces didn't have to pay taxes. I never once saw any of my fellow enlisted men filling out tax returns. Now that I think about it, it seems really strange. |
| Sun 22 Feb | no name | If you're working for the government, your pay comes from the government. If you pay taxes, your money goes to the government. Normally when you get paid, your employer gives some money to the government and some money to you. Government employees paying tax seems, well, somewhat pointless, really, although if you happen to have multiple income sources then it may be important for working out which tax bracket you're in. |
| Sun 22 Feb | mb | it has gotten better--as you mention, you don't need to send your w2 if you e-file. however, a few years ago you did--you'd e-file, then send off a 2-page return with the 'efile' form and w-2(s). i don't remember if you had to fill out yet another form for payments or if that was done all at once. more bizarre sillyness: many forms are now available as form-mode PDFs, so you can fill them out on your computer, print, and send off. but some forms must be filled out on special paper. the reason they claim is that they're computer read, but why a computer would have an easier time reading handwriting on a red piece of paper as opposed to a properly-printed form is beyond me. well not really--i think the affected forms are ones which are usually files electronically by businesses, and the few small people get the old technology shuffled off to them, a possibly rational reason. |
| Database Design: Ordered Collections | Sun 22 Feb | Not actually a database programmer |
| RDBMS are based on set theory and therefore do not implement the concept of ordered relationships and collections. In practice you have to do this on your own. One possibility is to add an additional integer field to the table that represents the items inside the collection. This field contains the ordering criteria. The ordering semantics is available to relational operations through the ORDERED BY option in SELECT statements. However, when the items inside the collection have to be rearranged, this strategy can lead to expensive reorganizations of many rows inside the table, affecting an unpredictable set of items, even if the position of only one item has to be adjusted. Among other things this can lead to locking problems. How do you handle this problem? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Patrik | ORDER BY always sorts result sets only. Why bother with the 'real' order in the table? You select whatever you need and sort the result set. There is no need to sort the individual data in the table. Or what am I missing here? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Not actually a database programmer | Patrik, the challenge is to store an (artificial) ordering criteria that cannot be derived from existing database fields. |
| Sun 22 Feb | M | How many items are in your collection? How often will they be rearranged? Will you act on the database of one item order change at a time, or prefer to make the entire change at once? If you have pretty huge lists with some major reorders, you could try to store the order in a seperate table. The table would contain the shared key for that record set and a long string field. You could then store the order in a string with the indiviudal record key seperated by a delimiter. When you query for that record set, you would also query for that order list. In your programming language, you would combine the two for ordering purposes. This is more work on your end, but to rewrite the list order, you are updating a single field in the DB. Obviously this is not relational and would have Codd juming up and down in agrevation. The number of list items would be limited to the length of your string field, but you can have very large text fields. Sometimes you have to use shortcuts to gain speed though. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Patrik | An ordering that cannot be derived from table fields? What would that accomplish other than poor SQL performance? I mean if you invent some virtual homebrew ordering magic that is not based on table fields, then that would be invisible to the SQL parser and you royally fool the SQL query plan optimizer. You would need to sort the result set of the complete table in your program anyways. This would lead to full table scans in the database. This is a bad idea. What is the root problem you want to solve by having this 'invisible' sort order? ... Why cant the sort order be visible in your database schema? And, in my experience, any half decent RDBMS do a much better job at sorting using ORDER BY than your average sort algorithm in your (or my) programs. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Tom H | 'challenge is to store an (artificial) ordering criteria that cannot be derived from existing database fields' How can you store the artificial ordering criteria if it can't be derived from the existing data? There must be some way to map the order into the records, or you could never find the records in which to store it. So look at the algorithm you are using to sequence or resequence the fields, and apply it to the result set (instead of storing an artificial ordering column). If I've still missed something here, you might need to supply a more concrete example. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Philo | I think he's talking about an order that's derived from data outside the database. For example, a student roll that lists kids in class rank order, but the grades aren't kept in this system. So every grading period the entire roll has to be re-ordered. And someone already gave the answer - just use a second table with two fields: StudentID and Order. Then you just have to re-write that table. As for performance, this example is exactly why you keep the data in a relational database - only an RDBMS would give you the ability to re-order the entire recordset while only locking the order data and not the full record data. You just have to learn to think relationally. ;-) Philo |
| Sun 22 Feb | Tom H | The second table is essentially the same as his original design. What's the difference if you store it in the same table or a child table? But your guess as to the source of the problem is probably correct; he needs to join data in one database with data from another source. So this is an external interface problem, not a database design problem (think web services, XML-RPC, etc). |
| Sun 22 Feb | Philo | If you store it in the same table, then you have to lock every row when you're updating the ordinal data. If you store it in a child table you only have to lock the child table. Since it's ordinal data, I'd think just about any change would generally be a full re-ordering (if #2 drops out, you have to touch rows 3->the end), so depending on how often you change the order, it could be a real issue. Philo |
| Sun 22 Feb | Tom H | Tempering my last post, the child table might be useful if changing the order does cause the locking/many row update he mentions. But I'd still prefer to see the original data (the grade) stored in the db, rather than a computed value (the rank). |
| Sun 22 Feb | Philo | Agreed. There are several potential problems that immediately come to mind: 1) Privacy. The system that's printing class rank may not be authorized to hold grade data. 2) Politics. The academic staff keeps grade data, the administrative staff keeps ranking data (or needs ranking data for some other purpose) 3) The grades are in a legacy system that doesn't do ranking. I've run into each of those problems in various systems I've worked on. Philo |
| Sun 22 Feb | FPR | Another motivation to store the ordering data in a table separate from the items being ordered is that it is probably a more logical model of what you are trying to do. The master table represents a set of individual items or objects. The ordering table represents ordered collections of those items/objects. Two distinct notions. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Mediocre ASP Monkey | >>But I'd still prefer to see the original data (the grade) stored in the db, rather than a computed value (the rank). << You can run into a situation where you're trying to order not by data that's out of your hands for whatever reason (the grades in the above example), but completely arbitrary schema. I've been thinking about this just this morning - trying to determine how to order questions for insurance application forms being read in from the database. The questions will be ordered by the (changeable) whims of particular insurance agents and underwriters, but I certainly don't want to hard-code the questions onto each and every form! My 'solution' is an integer field to control the ordering, defaulting back to ordering by the date the question field was entered at need (the ordering field exists in the table associating the question with a given insurance product). It feels very kludgy, but I can sorta get away with it because of the relatively small size of the problem. The only way that sort of thing could really work, I suspect, would be through an appropriate interface which manages the ordering whenever a change is made (for instance, an interface that allowed the insurance agents to change the order of questions without bothering me). I can't think of an elegant way to handle the problem, though... |
| Yes Joel you May Have a Linker! | Sun 22 Feb | Bill Rayer |
| Ive just read Joels article from 28th Jan Please Sir May I Have a Linker (OK Im a slow reader). Im moved to comment as Im interested in language design issues and have long disliked the move to runtimes which IMO are not 100% reliable. Joel, in a sense the answer has always been in front of you. As you know if you use C, C++ or Delphi you can produce statically linked EXEs which dont suffer runtime issues. In http://www.lingolanguage.com Ive spent a lot of effort making sure runtime inconsistencies can never occur (OK Lingo uses some runtime DLLs but these are versioned by filename and checked at startup). In Lingo I would guarantee there can never be any versioning issues, irrespective of what version of Windows youre using, and irrespective of whether other versions of Lingo (earlier or later) have been installed on the same PC. Theres nothing special about Lingo in this regard, you can do the same with any language supporting static linking. I also read http://weblogs.asp.net/jasonz/archive/2004/01/31/65653.aspx (Jason Zanders reply). His main objection to a .NET linker is security but this is a red herring. Security issues do not reside in run time library code that gets linked in. Eg in C/C++ I can pass NULL as a dest pointer to strcpy() and crash the program (or possibly cause an exploit). Although the crash is in strcpy() this is not a C runtime bug - the C runtime is doing what it should and the fault is mine for calling it wrongly. So I think security holes are fixed by patching the app source, recompiling and redistibuting the new compiled app. The penalties of separate dynamically linked language runtimes are clear. There are VB issues with installing the correct versions of OCX controls. When I worked at IBM we had to write an installer that switched between two different versions of the Java runtime, since the app we wrote (AO Manager) had some Java code developed locally and some developed by IBM in India, and they used different versions. Now that PCs have 512MB main memory and 60GB+ hard disks I dont see static linking as an issue. On a minor pedantic note I think Fortran came out around 1956 and I guess the first linkers would date from then. Being British I claim the first stored program computer was invented at Manchester University in 1949 so I think 1950 is too early for a linker. Bill Rayer |
| Sun 22 Feb | Fred | >> His main objection to a .NET linker is security but this is a red herring. Security issues do not reside in run time library code that gets linked in Maybe I read that article too fast, but what I understood, is that they'd rather you call .Net API's so that when a bug is found by MS, it can be more easily patched the next time you upgrade the .Net framework. OTOH, apps that just copy a sub-set of the .Net framework in their EXE statically will be left with the bug,with no way to force the developers who wrote those to grab the latest version of whatever .Net code they took,recompile, and send an update to all their customers. |
| Sun 22 Feb | H. Lally Singh | Quick nitpick, absolutely unrelated to the original post. Sorry, can't help it.
Even though (sadly) many programmers using a C++ compiler still use str*() for their string manipulation, and get burned for being irresponsible about buffer management, str*() aren't the C++ string manipulation routines.
std::string and std::vector |
| Sun 22 Feb | Brad Wilson | It comes down to this: There is probably at LEAST a 100:1 ratio of vertical business applications to horizontal customer applications (and I think I'm being generous here, personally). To design the system so that it best suits corporate apps instead of consumer apps is a no-brainer. Sure, it bugs him, because he's in the 1% (or less). What I don't get is that Joel has a big brain, and has mentioned on at least one occasion: 'consider the cost'. How can be objectively look at this, and yet still bitch about it? As has been pointed out so often, he has a ton of other options, including options from Microsoft. This topic (in general) really needs to die. |
| Sun 22 Feb | The real Entrepreneur | 'There is probably at LEAST a 100:1 ratio of vertical business applications to horizontal customer applications ' What do you base this on? (I think you may be right, but I'd like to know) That would explain the sinking feeling I, as a *commercial* (shrinkwrap) software developer feel, of being tugged around by MS's development language choices. There's a simple reason: Microsoft isn't focused on shrinkwrap sw development with .net. So they don't care about my needs or Joel's needs. One more reason NOT to use .net for my programs. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Brad Wilson | I have no hard stats, just time in the industry and a rough guess. I'm not sure there are hard stats. |
| Destructive experiments | Sun 22 Feb | Duq |
| Of course writing an online article about a word that only returns 1 result in a search engine destroys its own subject. Google now returns 9; the original one, the article on Joelonsoftware and 7 copies of the article... |
| Sun 22 Feb | Aussie Chick | kind of a cool concept though. Pick some obscure word/phrase, turn it into one word, something that will return zero hits on google. Embed this on your webpage, or in public posts (make it part of your handle). And then you can never get lost, anyone wanting you can just type your special word into google, and instead of being the 12,000th 'Joe Blogg' out of a possible 10,000 hits (okay really made those figures up, didn't even bothere putting 'Joe Blogg' into google to get an accurate figure...) suddenly you belong to everyone of the 300 hits. Not sure how useful this would really be, kind of like the whole Orkut thing in a way, I mean you friends could know your special words, and then they can join in the fun regardless of what website forum you have decided to join, makes the world alot smaller. Now as far as I could see the only market for this would be teenagers who find this sort of thing cool (I know I would have, or am I just a geek). Cannot imagine how many adults would like their online doings so transparent. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Experiment Failed | Ummm, I typed 'aussie chick' into Google, here's the top link: Nekkid Radio Xmas Party 2003 / Aussie Chick - 27 December 2003 partygirls@nekkidradio.com. TITLE: Aussie Chick. COPYRIGHT: (c)2003, Nekkid Radio ... |
| Sun 22 Feb | Aussie Chick | try typing ToowoombaChick See, if I used this as part of my signature, eventually google would return lots of places I have visited! |
| Sun 22 Feb | Andrew Cherry | Schrodinger's Google whack? |
| Sun 22 Feb | mb | and now you see why i use such a 'unique' 'name'. i don't want to be tracked. |
| Scroll speed in firebird/firefox | Sun 22 Feb | Rob |
| The thread on firebird prompted me to try out firefox, and it is pretty cool. The one thing that really bugs me is that the scroll speed is much slower than that of IE. This happens when using the scroll wheel or the up and down arrow keys. Does anyone know how to change this? I have searched the online help extensively -- that is one thing that sucks about firefox, lack of docs. Im sure it is very powerful but it is undocumented. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Satisfied \n User <br> :-) | It seems fine to me. If "smooth scrolling" is checked in the advanced options dialog, then uncheck and see if that makes a difference. When checked I found scrolling in general to be slower |
| Sun 22 Feb | Brad Wilson | Definitely turn off smooth scrolling. It's an "engineer" feature, not an "end user" feature. Dumb ass engineers. :-p |
| Sun 22 Feb | Jan Derk | Firefox docs: http://texturizer.net/firefox/ Firefox uses the Windows default scolling size for your mouse wheel. I think the default is to scroll 1 line per mouse wheel click. To change this go into the Windows control panel and select 'Mouse'. I have it set to 3 lines per scroll. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Roose | Well, if it uses the Windows default, then IE doesn't. Because IE scrolls 2-3 times as fast as Firefox and I like this. I'm sure there is a setting in Firefox, you just have to use that registry-like thing which I remember from a few releases ago. And smooth-scrolling was off by default. |
| Sun 22 Feb | www.marktaw.com | I did a very informal test. Setting both browsers to the same height & width and scrolling the JoS forum homepage (which is fairly long). It took around 4 scrolls in IE and 5-6 in Firebird. Clicking the down arrow in the scrollbar in Firebird requires 1 clicks to get past the FogCreek black bar on top. Clicking it in IE requires 1 click. So Netscape/Firebird probably does do 3 lines per click movement of the scroll wheel, but each line is shorter. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Roose | OK -- now I know why you were kind of dismissive. I think I uncovered a bug. I was reading the documentation you pointed to, and it said that if you press alt and scroll it goes line by line. I tried that and there was no difference, but when I released alt -- my scrolling was much faster! It seems like that was the default, and all it took was one use to make it behave correctly. However, it still doesn't solve the fact that pressing the down arrow only scrolls one line instead of 3 like in IE. It seems trivial but it makes browsing pages so much easier. |
| Sun 22 Feb | as | A related query - I just downloaded and installed version 0.8 of Firefox, having been running version 0.6 for some time. One thing that drives me crazy is the new "feature" whereby the screen is continually updated when the window is resized, causing the contents to leap around the page in an alarming fashion. Does anyone know how to stop it doing this? |
| Sun 22 Feb | fool for python | There was a bug with scroll speed on pages with background images. I belive this was fixed before the Firefox release. |
| Stupid errors in In Search of Stupidity | Sat 21 Feb | Albert D. Kallal |
Funny how my previous post about how dumb it is to state that dBase got eaten alive by FoxPro because dBase needed a linker and did not get one. As mentioned, this is simply not so. It is very clear that the source this incredibly stupid statement is from the book
In search of Stupidly.
As I pointed out…it was not the fact of a linker at all that hurt dBase, but the lack of runtime option!
I decided that since such a stupid and wrong statement from the book kind of entails a closer look, then what else is wrong in that book?. I mean, if one such large dumb statement is from that book…surly more must follow?
Hum…off to their web site.
http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/
Golly…just full of misrepresentations and silly statements. I only reading from the “free samples” / excerpts.
.
Lets take a few quotes here:
The Nuttiness of Subtractive Marketing Subtractive marketing works by taking a successful product and subtracting key capabilities and features until the product is clearly different from, and inferior to, the original. The subtractive marketer then attempts to pawn off her second-class creation by advertising it as a “value” or a “money saver.” It never seems to work. People will, if they have the choice, always refuse to buy something that brands them as not being able to afford anything better. Even people who are thrifty like to go in style; they just don’t like paying for it.It then goes on to talk about the failure of the Falcon, but the incredible success of the Mustang (which was based on the same platform). However, the real issue I have is the statement that people who are thrifty like to go in style, and that if take something away from the consumer and become a “value” vendor. Supposedly this is a bad thing? Oh really? What about the really crappy square looking car with no frills, virtually no styling and even had a 4 cylinder motor when most cars had larger engines? We are of course talking about the k-car that saved Chrysler. This was without question a low budget no fuss car that obviously should not have sold at all according the authors of in search of stupidity (SA = Stupidity Authors).. What is it..9 out 10 consumers will pump their own gas to save a some money, and the heck with the frills of a having a nice pump jockey. Again, the impression the SA folks give is that a image of thrifty ness is a bad marketing idea. And, lets take the shopping experience. Gee crappy lighting, crappy cement floors, crappy and non existent decor. Crappy shelves. Ugly floor pallets all over the place. Huge line ups! And, really crappy customer service? However, you do save a bundle of money with no frills. Yes, I am talking about Costco which is perhaps one the greatest revolutions for consumer shopping. It is beating the crap out of traditional stores, and went from nothing to taking a huge chunk of the market. They now sell billions per year!. Again, SA folks state that no frills, and the “bargain” mentality will not fly. They could not be farther from the truth! The ford falcon was simply ugly…it had nothing to do with cheap! And, in the excerpt form chapter 8 they talk about how expensive Porsches and Mercedes Benz got. However since the book makes such a strong statement on not making a budget , or striped down version of the product, they fail to mention the greatest success in the market place have actually been based on this concept of selling a cheaper version of flagship product. This is clearly what IBM was trying to achieve with the home pc that failed. It is a time horned product idea that when done right is a great idea. For, example the book fails to mention the introduction of Mercedes C class. The c Mercedes was a low cost budget mercies Benz without all the frills of the high end models (smaller motors, less options installed…basically stripped down models and smaller. They were for the cheaper folk. In fact, the models even had 4 cylinder motors!). This was a new low territory in terms of cost (and market) for Mercedes cars. Of course this low cost Mercedes is likely one of the great marking triumphs that Mercedes has EVER achieved. Sales of Mercedes Benz in some markets increased by TRIPLE DIGITS with the introduction of these low cost Benz. This also generated lots of traffic at the dealers. Without a doubt the c class saved many Benz dealers, and certainly increased the potential market of their products by leaps and bounds. Even now Jaguar is entering this market as I write this. Porsche also introduced the low cost boxer and for a few years could not even keep them on the lots. Again, those Porsche boxers are really poo poo by the real die hard Porches 911 fans. Never the less, the success of the low power, striped down Porsches has actually saved the company. When I now drive around town I CAN NOT believe how many of those Boxers are on the road. In fact, so successful is now new boxers are selling for more then 10 to 20 grand MORE then when they hit the showroom floors a few years ago. In fact, certainly one problem is now buyers are forgoing the expensive 911’s, and going for the cheaper low powered and lower cost boxers. After all, you get the Porsche name and prestigious.. Why buy a 911? Again, the Stupidly book complete ignores this concept of making a striped down product of a flagship product, or making a cheaper model of a great brand name. From the k-car to the c class Mercedes, and the Porsche boxers are fabulous examples of making a cheaper product of established product. The book got this concept complete backwards! The sample issues apply to retailing also! The ford falcon example is simply an example of failure…not the fact of company making a budget edition of a flagship product or name. And, in the example of the IBM “peanut” home computer, the MAIN REASON of failure was the lack of a proper keyboard. If the peanut was all stripped down..but had a decent keyboard..then it would have sold. In fact, the one of the main reasons of the INITIAL success of the IBM pc was a incredibly nice display (those TTL’s) , and a incredible nice DETACHABLE keyboard. We all remember that fantastic click clack those keyboards made. They were first rate pc’s and took the market by storm. IBM could have easily striped out a lot of stuff for the peanut home PC version BUT NOT the keyboard. I remembered that peanut keyboard and instantly told the sales man it would NOT sell. He replied, well, it is a IBM, and that will make it sell. The keyboard may have been durable enough to last a life time. However, it was crap. They did not even have to use the original IBM keyboard, but they at LEAST needed a decent keyboard. It is not a question of quality here. They could have used a MUCH cheaper keyboard for the home version. However, the keyboard for the home version was simply VERY crappy to type on. This is was not a issue of stripping down a flagship model, it was simply a issue of a incredible crappy keyboard. It was a cheap chiclets style keyboard…worse then what MOST of even the Apples, and pets and radio shack computers had at that time. It was not really a real keyboard..and that doomed the peanut. The bad keyboard was really the downfall of that computer. So, again, the moral is not to make a cheaper version…but don’t make crappy or BAD product! Here is another dowser of such incredible straw grasping from that book that I can’t believe! That word was “pointer.” As in a hierarchical pointer. As in a hierarchical database pointer. As in the development group had made the decision to discard the WordStar 2000 database and replace it with a new one based on hierarchical database technology. It was an incredibly foolish thing to do and it sealed MicroPro’s fate....That above statement is so incredibly dumb as to warrant a book recall! You can find the above quote at: http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/Book_Excerpts/Chapter_Four/chapter_four.html You see, way back then, each product had its own printer drivers as they were not part of the OS (gee at least the SA folks got that fact straight!). So, that printer database has all kinds codes for each printer. Things like the Bold printer on code, Bolder printer off code. These are just a bunch of codes. It is this database that the above brain dead quote refers to. The author is trying to make the case that since they used a new hierchial pointer database for printer codes, that was the reason for the fall and demise of the MirocPro word processor. I not saying the book is making this the ONLY reason, but the book tries to make a case that the old database could not be used. Well, only if you are stupid project manager and don’t have a clue about software. Obviously, the real problem at MicroPro was managers that don’t have a clue about software. The issue of not being able to use the old database is stupidity at its worst. In fact, a team of developers could write some code to copy those printer codes from the old database system to the new format in LESS THAN A DAY. In fact, I could move the printer codes in less then a day if you gave me the old database of printer codes. So, it is not a big deal that you can not “read” the old printer database…but you sure as the heck can “USE” the old data as the basis for the new database. As I write this, I am looking at my old FoxPro 2.6 (dos). (grabbed one of my old archives with Fox on it to check out the linker subject I just posted on). The FoxPro has a printer database of printer codes. In fact, it has 104 printers. No doubt, building up this database of printer codes is a valuable asset for any piece of software. So, in the case of FoxPro, we have drivers for likely the most popular 104 printers in the market place. The only important fact here is that the printer driver code only needs those codes. The layer or database engine code you use will not effect the process for the printer driver in any way. The MicroPro failure here is NOT the fact of using a pointer or weird database. This is just nonsense on the books part. The failure here is that no one was smart enough to simply write some code that would read the old data base of printer codes into the new database format (this is a one time thing). The SA author makes a good case that two software development teams where NOT cooperating, and that fact seems just fine. However, the author then goes on to tell this stupid story about how the new database could not use the old printer codes format due to some werid pointer database stuff! Sure, but a small piece of code to read that old data into the new format is a trivial programming exercise. All the printer driver code needs is the bold on code or the bold off code for a particular printer . The software layer that grabs those codes does not really matter It is a trivial matter (I REPEAT) TRIVIAL MATTER to copy those old codes from the old database to the new database…regardless of whatever technology was used. This book has got so much stuff wrong. Time after time, a idea or concept is proposed and then examples given to make the case . The problem here is that the points like the linker example, or the cheaper version example just don’t fly one bit here. Has anyone else read this book? Anyone have some opinions to counter my initial HORRABILE impression? I really do hate to shoot down a book that I have not read. I would certainly welcome some counter arguments to what I have observed so far. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada kallal@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn |
| Sat 21 Feb | Joel Spolsky | The book is meant to be funny... And though it's not correct in every detail (the author, Rick Chapman, is a marketer and not a programmer) it is quite accurate about the big picture of what happened in the early days of the PC software industry. And it's FUNNY! Really FUNNY! The author is the kind of person who has forgotten more about software marketing than you or I will ever learn. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Cowboy from FMJ | 'is a marketer and not a programmer' In other words it's like when Scoble talks about technology of past. Not always correct, but a good story. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Albert D. Kallal | Gee, perhaps I will just have to purchase a copy of the book. I really don’t mind some issues of technology not being 100% correct. To tear apart every little spec out of place would also not make, or break this book for me. It is not a book about the software development process anyway. I also hope I did not come across too harsh. However, there does seem to be a bit of a writing style issue here that does clash with how I see things. It is not such a problem that some technical issues in the book are not up a developers knowledge level. Really, I have little problem with that!. My real complaint is that some ideas used to support his views and ideas as to why some products were failures don’t fly with how I see these things. Perhaps , we are dealing with that typical clash that is so often observed between technical type people.. and marketing type people… My motivation for this post was some input…and perhaps a bit a whack on the brain as to how to read/view the book. It would seem that a light hearted approach is needed here. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada kallal@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn |
| Sun 22 Feb | VPC | Then maybe you should read Winners, Losers & Microsoft. It's not funny and it takes more time and concentration from reader, but authors tried to look more scientific and accurate writing about similar products and events Stupidity Author did. |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | OK, Albert. While I've decided to not participate on a regular basis on this forum because some of the Yahoos here practice identity theft, I think I can answer some of these points at this juncture secure in the knowledge that people will know it's me responding to you, not some socially inadequate geek. Let's take these one by one. +++As I pointed out…it was not the fact of a linker at all that hurt dBase, but the lack of runtime option!+++ Sigh. Factually wrong. Ashton-Tate certainly DID have a runtime option. The problem was, A-T wanted to charge for it. Developers didn't want to pay A-T for it. Hence the development of compiler technology, which bypassed the A-T runtime offering and made Ed Esber very, very angry. +++It then goes on to talk about the failure of the Falcon, but the incredible success of the Mustang (which was based on the same platform).+++ This is not 'talk.' This is one of marketing's most famous examples of a 'build towards' marketing campaign ever executed in any business, which is why I make reference to it. +++However, the real issue I have is the statement that people who are thrifty like to go in style, and that if take something away from the consumer and become a “value” vendor. Supposedly this is a bad thing?+++ Yes, this is a bad thing. People don't like being told they can't afford any better. People like to think they're getting more for their money, not just a fair exchange. Marketing 101. The Ford Falcon was marketed from the day of its conception in the US as a car for the average Joe who couldn't afford any better. And guess what. No one thinks they're an 'average Joe who can't afford any better. ' Everyone thinks they're an average Joe who DESERVES better and is smart enough to buy it. Hence the success of Mustang. +++What about the really crappy square looking car with no frills, virtually no styling and even had a 4 cylinder motor when most cars had larger engines? We are of course talking about the k-car that saved Chrysler. +++ Sigh. Complete, utter, ignorance of the facts and history. Albert, there never was a 'K-car.' There was the K-chassis design, which Chrysler sold via a top down branding campaign. (To understand what this is, READ ISOS.) Many differenct Chrysler cars were built on the K-chassis, including Chrysler's more profitable luxury offerings, as well as mid-line cars such as the Aries and Reliant. 'K' was sold as a combination of technology, economy, and power. And what helped make Chrysler profitable was doing things like chopping off the top of Aries and Reliants and turning them into convertibles, throwing turbo-charged engines into Omnis and creating the GLH (goes like hell) and inventing the 'pocket rocket' concept, all example of 'build towards.' Let's not forget the mini-van, of course. Built, I believe, on the K-chassis. +++What is it..9 out 10 consumers will pump their own gas to save a some money, and the heck with the frills of a having a nice pump jockey. +++ Sigh. More ignorance of history. Albert, up till the oil shocks of the 70s, most people didn't pump their gas because it was included as part of the standard service. After the oil shocks, standard service was withdrawn from most gas stations, replaced by self serve. The public did not clamor for this; it was driven by a shift in the economics of oil. +++The ford falcon was simply ugly…it had nothing to do with cheap!+++ But the car, oddly enough, sold well in Australia! And why? Because it was marketed as a fun set of wheels and sold with many enticing options! Now, maybe Australians are just inherently attracted to ugly things? Or perhaps the marketing approaches to the respective audiences differed? Hmmmm? +++And, in the excerpt form chapter 8 they talk about how expensive Porsches and Mercedes Benz got. +++ Yup. I do. I focus on the MB 190, which came into the market at about $15K and ended up selling for about $45K. And we're talking 1980s dollars. About the same pricing curve occurred with the Porsche 944, also mentioned. +++For, example the book fails to mention the introduction of Mercedes C class. +++ Sheesh. The introduction of the C class, which occurred years later, proves my point. The MB 190 was a four-cylinder small car selling for the SAME price as the Lexus and Infiniti brands introduced by the Japanese in the 80s. These high-end cars, targeting the E-class MBs, sold for about 40K. They were six cylinder models that were larger, had more features, and were in line with market expectations about what you should pay for a car in this class. MB expected it could get away with its pricing schemes based on the strength of the MB brand. Well, they couldn't. They lost large amounts of market share to the Japanese and were forced to come up with C class concept years later in order to regain lost ground. It would really, really help if you read the book. +++Porsche also introduced the low cost boxer and for a few years could not even keep them on the lots. Again, those Porsche boxers are really poo poo by the real die hard Porches 911 fans. +++ Since the events I discuss in the book occurred in the late 80s, the event YOU discuss occurred in the late 90s, you haven't read the book, and are ignorant of many basic facts this is completely off the point. Again, Porsche's introduction of these models proves my point. +++It is not a question of quality here. They could have used a MUCH cheaper keyboard for the home version. However, the keyboard for the home version was simply VERY crappy to type on. This is was not a issue of stripping down a flagship model, +++ Again, since you have not read the book, you have no real idea of what you are talking about. I have talked to people at IBM who were involved in the design of the PC Junior, I sold them, and I know that the machine was deliberately crippled to ensure it would not compete with the PC. Expansion capabilities, storage, co-processing, etc were all deliberately limited to achieve this goal. Not really a disputable point if you ever actually looked at or used a PC Junior. +++That above statement is so incredibly dumb as to warrant a book recall!... It is this database that the above brain dead quote refers to. The author is trying to make the case that since they used a new hierchial pointer database for printer codes, that was the reason for the fall and demise of the MirocPro word processor.+++ Unbelievable. Albert, to someone who has read ISOS, you have no idea of how silly you sound. No, Albert, that's not the point. The point was that the effort to convert the database structure from its flat file format to a hierarchical one was a bad business decision based on several factors. Which I will not explain to you. Read the book. +++ the book tries to make a case that the old database could not be used. +++ Uh, no it does not. +++In fact, a team of developers could write some code to copy those printer codes from the old database system to the new format in LESS THAN A DAY. In fact, I could move the printer codes in less then a day if you gave me the old database of printer codes. So, it is not a big deal that you can not “read” the old printer database…but you sure as the heck can “USE” the old data as the basis for the new database.+++ The fact that you are so inexperienced in this area is made grimly manifest by a statement I'd expect to hear from some kid learning BASIC in high school. Maintaining, testing, and verifying the operation of hundreds of devices such as printers is not the work of a 'day.' Especially in the pre-Wndows era. ESPECIALLY for a company that lived and died on printer support. I won't try to explain to you what IS involved. Such things as a rewrite of the printer install program, the lack of any desktop tools to achieve this port, the need to rigorously text and then retest all printer operations to insure data was not mangled during the port, etc, etc, etc. Suffice it to say that you are totally out of your league here. You really should read the book. Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman |
| Sun 22 Feb | Cowboy from FMJ | Marketer meets techie. It's like watching a train wreck. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Stephen Jones | Dear Rick, To comment about the price of cars without considering currency fluctations is pretty stupid. Also you are limiting yourself to the USA market. The cheapest Mercedes, whether the S200 or the !90 has always sold a lot outside the USA. It's two selling points are that it holds its value, and parts are cheap compared to Japanese cars - the two are linked. The Mercedes reputation outside of the States is for reliability. BMW's tend to collapse after a few years (or less in the case of the smaller ones) and their spare parts are horrifically expensive, and old Jaguars or Daimlers are so disaster prone that you would pay a premium to swap one for a Lada of equivalent age; in the UK they're mainly used by unemployed rap singers who park them outside the pub and aren't too bothered if they have to walk back. American cars are considered a joke in this respect (with the exception of the Caprice Classic, GMC Suburban and Jeep Cherokee) In Europe Mercedes are used as taxis and a taxi driver is only prepared to pay nearly twice the price of an equivalent car if he thinks he'll recoup the investment. You seem to have completely misunderstood what Allbert was saying about the printer database. He wasn't talking about rewriting the database. He was talking about converting it. As he has been working with the programs you mention since the late 80's you are on dangerous ground to accuse him of not knowing what he is talking about. Sure. testing with each printer would be a pain, but they would already have the printers from the first time they tested. It's pretty stupid to say that the public didn't clamour for self-service at petrol stations. They didn't clamour for self-service in supermarkets either, but what happens of course is that when someone introduces a cost saving measure, and reduces prices accordingly, everybody flocks to buy there and other companies go broke or follow suit. Of course companies can also upmarket themselves; it depends on what the consumer wants, but the consumer doesn't initiate the trend. Now of course, what you mustn't do is rub it in the face of the consumer that he has a crippled version, though that has been known to succeed (the consumer version of Photoshop is an example). You've got to make people think of the brand name, not the fact that they are buying the cheapest of the brand. And of course for selling crippleware successfully look at Microsoft! Mind you, having a monopoly does allow you to be eclectic in your marketing decisions :) |
| Sun 22 Feb | Stephen Jones | ----' Sigh. Factually wrong. Ashton-Tate certainly DID have a runtime option. The problem was, A-T wanted to charge for it. Developers didn't want to pay A-T for it. '---- If you had bothered to read the earlier post Albert was referring to you would have read, --'So, developers really were NOT asking for linker…but a royalty free otpion..and that could be runtime, or some linker.'----- Albert's point was that FoxPro then, and Access now, offer a royalty free run time, and if a developer got that he couldn't give a monkey's toss about a linker. ---' I sold them, and I know that the machine was deliberately crippled to ensure it would not compete with the PC. Expansion capabilities, storage, co-processing, etc were all deliberately limited to achieve this goal. Not really a disputable point if you ever actually looked at or used a PC Junior.'---- You're failing to get Albert's point. He's not denying that the machine was crippled. What he is saying is that this was not the reason for it not selling, but the fact that it had a crappy keyboard, which was the first thing the user would feel. He specifically mentions discussing this with salesmen, so you can hardly accuse him of never having seen one. You may disagree with his point, and no doubt having tried to sell it may know of other factors. but his point is that if the 'crippling' had been done intelligently then the concept would have worked. You're saying that poor implementation invalidates the whole concept. And surely the PC itself is the perfect example of subtractive marketing working when the economics are right. |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++To comment about the price of cars without considering currency fluctations is pretty stupid.+++ And to have not been there and studied the subject and then presume to know what you are talking about is even dumber. Currency fluctuations did not account for the run up in the MB 190's price. During the 1986/87period Audi, which sold the 5000/100 at a comparable price to the MB 190 in Germany, ran an ad called 'Mysteries of the Sea' in which they made fun of the MB 190 price. The company pointed out that the two cars sold for the same in Germany and then pointed out the discrepancies in the prices between the two cars in the US. +++The Mercedes reputation outside of the States is for reliability. BMW's tend to collapse after a few years (or less in the case of the smaller ones) and their spare parts are horrifically expensive, and old Jaguars or Daimlers are so disaster prone that you would pay a premium to swap one for a Lada of equivalent age;+++ Yes, yes, no kidding. And completely off the point, because YOU have not read the book either and thus have no idea of what was said and the point that was made. +++You seem to have completely misunderstood what Allbert was saying about the printer database. He wasn't talking about rewriting the database. He was talking about converting it.+++ You seem to have not read the book and thus, like him, have no idea of what you are talking about. +++As he has been working with the programs you mention since the late 80's you are on dangerous ground to accuse him of not knowing what he is talking about.+++ No, actually, I'm on absolutely solid ground. As I say in the book, I started off in the industry programming in Vulcan/dBase II. The last significant piece of code I ever wrote was in 1991, a vertical market app designed to track blood gas sticks for BMHC in New Yawk. 20K lines of Paradox code. Not a huge project, but it had to be solid. +++Sure. testing with each printer would be a pain, but they would already have the printers from the first time they tested.+++ Like Albert, you are absolutely clueless about the impact and requirements of ripping out a critical subsystem from a piece of 80s shrink wrapped code. There's not much point in arguing the point with you; you simply don't know what you're talking about, haven't read the book, and aren't really capable, at this point, of arguing the issues coherently. +++It's pretty stupid to say that the public didn't clamour for self-service at petrol stations.+++ It's the facts, son. People didn't rush to save money pumping their own gas; they were forced out of their cars. +++Now of course, what you mustn't do is rub it in the face of the consumer that he has a crippled version+++ No kidding. But that is precisely what IBM did. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | | rick, aren't you a successful marketeer and author? do you not have anything better to do than "argue" with anonymous IT drones on a sunday? why not take the afternoon off to wax the mercedes, or something? Do you really want your kids to do a google search and find dad arguing with a canadian and a saudi about fox pro? |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++If you had bothered to read the earlier post Albert was referring to you would have read,+++ If Albert had read the book, I'd bother. But based on the silly statements he's made so far, there is no point. +++--'So, developers really were NOT asking for linker…but a royalty free otpion..and that could be runtime, or some linker.'----- Albert's point was that FoxPro then, and Access now, offer a royalty free run time, and if a developer got that he couldn't give a monkey's toss about a linker.+++ Well, no kidding. And off the point. Ed Esber didn't like losing that A-T runtime revenue, which sparked the behavior and actions that led to the demise of A-T. It would REALLY help if some of you actually read the book instead of throwing out pointless and off the point observations on a subject of which you are demonstrably ignorant. +++---' I sold them, and I know that the machine was deliberately crippled to ensure it would not compete with the PC. Expansion capabilities, storage, co-processing, etc were all deliberately limited to achieve this goal. Not really a disputable point if you ever actually looked at or used a PC Junior.'----+++ You're failing to get Albert's point. He's not denying that the machine was crippled. What he is saying is that this was not the reason for it not selling, but the fact that it had a crappy keyboard, which was the first thing the user would feel. +++ Amazing. So, you're claiming that because the unit was crippled with a keyboard it was not crippled because the keyboard crippled it. Amazing. Why not read the book and you'll actually be able to comment intelligently on its observations? And you weren't there and I was. The first thing the aftermarket did after the introduction of Junior was rush plenty of keyboards to market. But AFTER you'd bought the keyboard, figured out how to add a second floppy, bought the upgrade to see an 80 character screen, etc, etc, etc, why bother? People just bought PCs. +++his point is that if the 'crippling' had been done intelligently then the concept would have worked. +++ His point, as the book points out, never seems to work. This concept has been tried again and again and again. And has failed again and again and again. As Joel recently found out for himself. As the book documents (but you haven't read it, so you don't know this). +++You're saying that poor implementation invalidates the whole concept. And surely the PC itself is the perfect example of subtractive marketing working when the economics are right. +++ No, it wasn't. The PC was a nice system for its day and attractively priced. Of course, you may be one of those types who nattered on endlessly about the 8088 not being a 'true' 16 bit chip but, of course, one paid any attention to all of that. And, of course, you haven't read the book so you're basically talking through your hat. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dennis Atkins | Albert's not anonymous at all - he's got a site, source crode, photographs, an address and telephone number. Call him up if you want some good transaction software put together for tour buses. > More ignorance of history. Albert, up till the oil shocks of the 70s, most people didn't pump their gas because it was included as part of the standard service. After the oil shocks, standard service was withdrawn from most gas stations, replaced by self serve. The public did not clamor for this; it was driven by a shift in the economics of oil. This is totally false. As everyone over 30 in the entire North America knows and remembers, We had full serve and self serve at nearly every gas station in the US for over 30 years. I guess Rick's never been to the US? |
| Sun 22 Feb | long time lurker | Is Chapman great at marketing or what?? He comes to a website frequented by the target audience for his book and manages to post a response that has the words "read the book" 10 times. |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++This is totally false. +++ This is totally true and only a kid would argue the point. Up till the oil shocks, someone pumped your gas. After the shocks, you pumped your gas. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++Is Chapman great at marketing or what?? +++ I sure am! +++He comes to a website frequented by the target audience for his book and manages to post a response that has the words 'read the book' 10 times. +++ Yup. Great marketing and a generous offer on my part to some to stop making fools of themselves misstating basic facts, learn from the past, and hopefully not repeat history. ALL of which can happen if you read the book! Excerpts at: www.insearchofstupidity.com rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | rick, aren't you a successful marketeer and author? Sometimes! +++do you not have anything better to do than 'argue' with anonymous IT drones on a sunday? +++ Writing a book and defending your literary reputation is a contact sport. JOS is an important site that many people viist. When someone attacks your book via a series of wild misstatements it behooves you to respond. Of course, you can adopt the above it all attitude Novell displayed when MS came after them after the release of NT. To see how well THAT approach worked out, I suggest you read chapter nine of ISOS to find out. Also, the controversy helps build interest and sales! +++find dad arguing with a canadian and a saudi about fox pro? +++ I don't think it would really bother them and I'm indifferent to the nationality of the people with whom I discourse. rick why not take the afternoon off to wax the mercedes, or something? Do you really want your kids to do a google search and find dad arguing with a canadian and a saudi about fox pro? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Stephen Jones | Dear Rick, Congratulations on giving us another example of 'In Search of Stupidity'. An author publishes excerpts from his book on his web site apparently deliberately chosen to make the reader think he doesn't know what he is talking about. When this is pointed out he proceeds to tell the prospective customer that he is an idiot and ought to read the book immediately. Why don't you try it out with software. Give a trial version of your program that destroys all the readers data. When the prospective customer complains tell him he's an idiot and it's all his fault because HE HASN'T BOUGHT THE PROGRAM. Rick, why should we buy your book when your excerpts appear to be controversial at best, and you come across as a loud-mouthed obnoxious jerk? |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++An author publishes excerpts from his book on his web site apparently deliberately chosen to make the reader think he doesn't know what he is talking about.+++ What a stupid comment. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? Look, if you can't argue the facts or learn them, why not go back to your cubicle somewhere, keep telliing yourself how much smarter you are than everyone else, and don't try to ever manage or start your own company? ISOS is fun of course, but, as a guy on Amazon noted, it's also a good Rorshach test. People who are serious about building a business will read it and avoid repeating history. Those of you who like to repeat history and do the same stupid things already done by previous generations of idiots will just have to learn the hard way. As I said, I'm planning a sequel. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dennis Atkins | Well I certainly hope this is not the real chapman and is actually an imposter. Joel (who wrote the intro to the book) says Rick is a fun guy. but this 'imposter' just comes across as a creep. If it is the real Chapman, i know I would never want to read his book and if this name-calling diatribe is an example of his marketing skills, only a fool would hire him to market their products! I remember that toy PC membrane keyboard. It really did look and feel cheap and so there was no point to even trying the computer out, regardless of what other features it had. if I want a lousy keyboard I'll get a speak and spell. Even a $5 calculator has a better keyboard. Regarding Chapman's continued assertions that full serve was not an option after the gas crises, I think he must have been smokin too much crack during those years! Does ANYONE on this board think that you couldn't get full serve at most all gas stations (for 10 cents more a gallon typically unless it wa sTuestady and you were a lady, or any day and you had a handicapped placard in which case they charged you regular) up until around 1999 or so? |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | Awww. Have I been too hard on the Kings of Code here? People who like to dish it out regularly? But can't seem to take it? Hurt your feelings? Pointed out the facts and made you feel not so smart? Well, well, you'll get over it. +++Regarding Chapman's continued assertions that full serve was not an option after the gas crises, I think he must have been smokin too much crack +++ Sigh. Amazing stuff. Uh, no, that's not what was said. As I said, a kid. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | no name | Mr Rick Chapman seems to be suffering under the delusion that by acting like a socially inadequate asshole, he's going to bully people into buying his book. Well tough luck Ricky, I'm not buying and you made yourself look like such a moron here that I highly doubt your book has any value at all. And if it this isn't the real Rick Chapman, I congratulate you for making the guy look like a supreme idiot. |
| Sun 22 Feb | I'm Rick Chapman, and so's my wife! | 'I think I can answer some of these points at this juncture secure in the knowledge that people will know it's me responding to you, not some socially inadequate geek.' 'And to have not been there and studied the subject and then presume to know what you are talking about is even dumber.' 'And completely off the point, because YOU have not read the book either and thus have no idea of what was said and the point that was made.' 'There's not much point in arguing the point with you; you simply don't know what you're talking about, haven't read the book, and aren't really capable, at this point, of arguing the issues coherently.' 'It would REALLY help if some of you actually read the book instead of throwing out pointless and off the point observations on a subject of which you are demonstrably ignorant.' 'And, of course, you haven't read the book so you're basically talking through your hat.' 'Yup. Great marketing and a generous offer on my part to some to stop making fools of themselves misstating basic facts, learn from the past, and hopefully not repeat history.' 'Ahh. I wondered how long it would take a socially inadequate asshole to show up!' -- Rick Chapman Frankly, I feel pretty confident that the person replying here is both the real Rick Chapman AND a socially inadequate geek. You come across as a real jerk. Try not attacking people personally just because they disagree with you, and try supporting your arguments with something other than 'buy my book.' People will like you a lot better. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Stephen Jones | NO, I don't really think you had deliberately chosen the extracts to confuse; however from the extracts alone you are clearly wrong in your generalization about cars in Chapter 3: ---'the Falcon was designed from the get-go as a “people’s car.” In other words, it couldn’t go very fast, got good gas mileage, and was economical to run. Extolling these virtues was the car’s deliberately plug-ugly design,'--- Now, the fact that the car was 'plug-ugly' probably explains why it didn't take off, as Albert said, but substitute 'Citreon 2CV' or 'Volkswagen Beetle' for 'Falcon' and you have two of the most phenomenally successful cars in history. The truth is that there are plenty of successful example of subtractive marketing, but they do depend on accertaining the details, and the market (the 2CV would never have sold to Americans). Sometimes you can still recover from a mistake. Intel fouled up with the first Celeron, but made up for it with the increased cache and thus saw off Cyrix and held off AMD at the bottom end of the market. You clearly give the impression in the excerpt of Chapter Four that the change from a flat file database to a hierarchical database was the reason Wordstar 2000 did not have printer support. Moving the data from one to the other shouldn't require ---' Such things as a rewrite of the printer install program'--- any more than moving customer records from Foxpro to Oracle would require digging all the letters from customers out of filing cabinets to recreate the data. There might be other factors involved but you've not pointed them out, either in the excerpt or in your post. Your comments on car prices in Chapter Eight still should have had some mention of exchange rates. In 1991 the Mark and the pound were higher against the dollar than they are even now, and the yen was incredibly low. The comparable Japanese saloons you mention would have been costing 50% more only a couple of years later unless the Japanese sold them as lost leaders. And incidentally, Toyota produced a 'value version' Lexus that was pretty successful only a year or so later. Actually, that number of mistakes in excerpts from ten chapters is not a bad percentage (I can't find anything else seriously at fault, though nothing to ethuse over either). But if you reckon drawing attention to the books faults, as opposed to its good points, is the way to market it, who am I to object. After all, you're the guy who knows the answers to the universe. |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++Frankly, I feel pretty confident that the person replying here is both the real Rick Chapman AND a socially inadequate geek. You come across as a real jerk.+++ But no one can argue that you ARE a real jerk as you practice identify theft and are coward who hides behind this 'flaw' in this board. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | ++substitute 'Citreon 2CV' or 'Volkswagen Beetle' for 'Falcon' and you have two of the most phenomenally successful cars in history.+++ Neither the Citroen nor Beatle were marketed in the US as wheels for the proletariat, the Beetle's Nazi ancestry as a 'Volks' car nothwithstanding. The Beetle in particular was the darling of academics and intellectuals, who regarded it as a 'culture' statement. It was bought by many families as a second car, or as a starter set of wheels for the kids. +++The truth is that there are plenty of successful example of subtractive marketing, +++ The truth is that there are very few of them in high tech. And software is an area of particular danger. But don't let me stop you from trying! +++You clearly give the impression in the excerpt of Chapter Four that the change from a flat file database to a hierarchical database was the reason Wordstar 2000 did not have printer support. +++ I clearly gave no such impression. You are unable to read clearly; I suggest you go back and persuse the excerpt far more carefully. Actually, I recommend you buy the book and read it so that you will have a clue as to what you are talking about. +++Moving the data from one to the other shouldn't require ---' Such things as a rewrite of the printer install program'--- any more than moving customer records from Foxpro to Oracle would require digging all the letters from customers out of filing cabinets to recreate the data.+++ As I said, you are completely ignorant of the issues surrounding such an effort. In point of fact, the problems were immense, the product was delayed by months by the effort, and when WordStar 5.0 shipped it had a database one third the size of the WS2K product. Again, you simply don't know what you are talking about. The facts are on 'the ground' and not in dispute. If you want to know more, read the book. +++Your comments on car prices in Chapter Eight still should have had some mention of exchange rates. +++ No, not really, since the huge increasess in price were not generated by exchange rates, as Audi pointed out. +++And incidentally, Toyota produced a 'value version' Lexus that was pretty successful only a year or so later.+++ And they didn't charge 40K for it. Next. Amazing. Unshakeable ignorance in full pursuit of unsupportable assertions. +++Actually, that number of mistakes in excerpts from ten chapters is not a bad percentage (I can't find anything else seriously at fault, though nothing to ethuse over either).+++ No 'mistakes' have uncovered by you or anyone else. What has been uncovered is a particular type of arrogance peculiar to many in high-tech. I talk about this syndrome in the video you can see on www.insearchofstupidity.com +++ After all, you're the guy who knows the answers to the universe. +++ Mmmm hmmm. Now, go read the book and asuage your ignorance. You are lamentably ignorant of the past and the mistakes that were made. I know the facts, have demonstrated that, and have accomplished what I felt I needed to do in this thread. I don't want to upset all you fragile flowers out there any further; watching the tears tremble in the corners of your cornflower blue eyes is more than even my flinty heart can bear. You can all repair to a room somewhere, have a big group hug, and console yourselves over your rough treatment at my uncaring hands. And then you can read the book and actually learn something. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | Will the real Rick Chapman please stand up? | 'Mmmm hmmm. Now, go read the book and asuage your ignorance. You are lamentably ignorant of the past and the mistakes that were made. I know the facts, have demonstrated that, and have accomplished what I felt I needed to do in this thread.' Does that mean you'll go away again? Please? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dennis Atkins | 'What has been uncovered is a particular type of arrogance peculiar to many in high-tech.' I wonder if you are aware that the guy you are talking to is a high school English teacher? Knowledgable about a wide range of subjects, but not 'in high tech'. Probably you'll slam him for not being an expert next. Perhaps you could tell us about your own high tech qualifications? Many successful projects under your belt? A fair understanding of a decent number of languages? |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++I wonder if you are aware that the guy you are talking to is a high school English teacher? +++ Well, I suggest the teach buy copies of my book as an excellent example of contemporary business writing for their class. It's one biz book they'll enjoy reading! +++Perhaps you could tell us about your own high tech qualifications? +++ You can read my bio on www.aegis-resources.com and www.insearchofstupidity.com. +++A fair understanding of a decent number of languages? +++ Coding? Haven't done any serious coding since 1991. Languages. I used to know 6502 assembler, all variants of dBase, Paradox up till version 4.0, some BASIC of course, a smattering of DBMS packages such as K-man and similar stuff. Also was pretty good with InfoStar, though it never really had a language per say. Not that this is on the point, of course. ISOS is a book about high-tech marketing. Bad high-tech marketing. As brought to you in the past. For the future, I feel I can rely on some members of this forum as grist for my future efforts. I'm sure they won't disappoint me! rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | Tayssir John Gabbour | Changing topic a bit (I don't know much about the 80s), do you still think it was a good idea not to participate in Amazon's lookinside program? It clearly conflicts with your idea of leaving people hanging at the end of your excerpts, and you've probably worked to ensure that people who know your book will know your website. However, if Amazon believes there's a correllation between lookinside and effectiveness of pushing a book on its frontpage, you might lose out on free advertising. And in physical bookstores the whole discussion is moot since they'll just flip through it. So would you take the same strategy for your sequel book? I know they've recently dropped looksinside for searchinside, but I'm pretty sure they had it when you came out with your book. |
| Sun 22 Feb | not required | Hi Rick. If I'm ever unlucky enough to come across a copy of your book, I'll make sure to put a copy of it on Kazaa so we can all marvel at your immense studity for free. |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | 'Hi Rick. If I'm ever unlucky enough to come across a copy of your book, ' I can assure that one thing this thread has guaranteed is that every clueless geek who read this thread is rushing out to get their hands on a copy of the book ASAP. They'll do their best to avoid paying for it, but they'll read it. You can put money on that. The smart ones will buy the book, make notes, and avoid repeating history. 'I'll make sure to put a copy of it on Kazaa so we can all marvel at your immense studity for free. ' Awww. Is your little feelings hurt? The Big Bad Rick made you screw up your eyes and cry? Mommy will pat you on the back and make it all feel better. I'm not worried, little man. The book's not in an E-format and you'll have to spring for the copy machine. I'm sure you're too cheap to bother. Sheesh. What a bunch of whiners hang here. Where are the manly coders of old? The effete snivels of these second raters are dreary! rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | braid_ged | Just in Case anyone is interested, the Ford Falcon is _massive_ in Australia, and has been since at least the early 1970s. Ford Falcon and Holden (a local Australian Car brand owned by GM) Commodore duke it out for supremecy in the large family sedan market. Taxis for example, are often Falcons. I never knew the Falcon was originally a failed US model :) |
| Sun 22 Feb | Tayssir John Gabbour | Rick told me he accidentally sent me an email instead of adding a post, so I'm sure I can mention that he said it was more his publisher's decision to make, not his. And he explained that he's not absolutely sure it's effective since one can eventually read the whole thing with the new searchinside thing. Apress probably has a lot of data on whether it's worthwhile; they are extremely experimental with authors putting stuff on the web. Entire drafts of books-in-progress are up, and they're reprinting Graham's _On Lisp_ which is free online. They've got good forums at http://forums.apress.com/ . But whatever, as a consumer I'm satisfied with what's on your site. In fact, I've bugged O'Reilly on using multimedia to sell books, like videos of the authors teaching something or whatever. - - - - Incidentally, if you wonder about programmers of yore, it seems coders are politer than before, and expect more politeness. I've noticed this on google's usenet archives. |
| Sun 22 Feb | rick chapman | +++Incidentally, if you wonder about programmers of yore, it seems coders are politer than before+++ Perhaps, but you can't tell it from this forum. As the song says, you only get what you give. And I've been quite fair to my respondents. rick |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dan Brown | This is surreal. Will somebody email Chapman & tell him that somebody is on here abusing his target audience and making him look like an asshole? ((( p.s. Dan Brown remembers full serve/self serve lines for the gas stations well after the oil crisis. At least in Texas))) |
| Sun 22 Feb | Philip Dickerson | braid_ged, [An aside, completely off-topic] The Australian Ford Falcon bears little resemblance to the old Falcon in the USA. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if the only thing they had in common was the name. I believe the Australian Falcon was designed (or at least heavily modified) in the Australian division of Ford specifically for the Australian market. The early Australian version looks much more like a 'muscle' car than the old American Falcon, and was designed to handle the temperature extremes and high speeds on the rougher outback roads; and some models were also fitted with 40 gallon fuel tanks to help Ford win the Bathurst 500 races for unmodified production street cars. |
| Firebird 1.5 Final Release | Sat 21 Feb | Dewd |
| Hey, there were lots of release candidates to reach this final release, so it better work well ! ;-) http://firebird.sourceforge.net/ Some strong points about it: 1) It is totally free, so you can embedded it with your apps and distribute it freely. 2) It performs sometimes 30% faster than Interbase. I first saw that number from a German developer that said that one big press/printer (I dont recall) from Germany had migrated from Interbase to Firebird after some benchmarks showed such an improvement. And I saw it too in some tests done by me. 3) Linux and Windows versions. Etc. It may not be a match to MS SQL Server or Oracle or... But it certainly is robust enough to be used in production systems. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Fred | Precisely, any news of the embedded version, ie. the one that comes in a single DLL with no server required? When I checked the solutions last summer, it was just barely in beta, and since MySQL wouldn't work from VB, I settled from SQLite. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Dewd | I think this http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/firebird/Firebird-1.5.0.4290_embed_win32.zip?download might be of interest to you ! :) |
| Sat 21 Feb | Joel Spolsky | How does it compare to Jet? |
| Sun 22 Feb | Herbert Sitz | To Jet? Well, first of all, it's a true database server not just a fileserver database. It will obviously scale much better than Jet, both in size of db and in number of users. And feature wise it's got views, stored procedures, triggers. Some of it is implemented in very nifty ways. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Dewd | I don't know Joel. But 'InterBase and Microsoft SQL Server, a Technical Comparison', by Bill Todd - http://www.borland.com/products/white_papers/pdf/ib_vs_SQLServer.pdf - Has some info even on MSDE. |
| Quicken's Quality Meltdown - Anybody know why? | Sat 21 Feb | J. Peterson |
| A happy Quicken 99 (or was it 98?) user, I recently upgraded to Quicken 2004 after warnings from my bank that on-line banking would cease to work if I didnt upgrade (an evil marketing strategy if ever there was one). Quicken 2004 is the classic example of a disaster release: Incredibly buggy, in some cases corrupting users data, gratuitous UI changes offering no benefit, five patches out in as many months. Dont just take my word for it, look at user comments on Amazon (2/5 stars), ZDNet (94% thumbs down), CNet (79% thumbs down). Matching on-line transactions to recorded ones isnt exactly rocket science, and Quicken had it working for years. Yet in Quicken 04 they managed to screw it up completely. Its just amazing. My question for the JoS crowd: Does anybody have the inside scoop on how a major software vendor caused such a massive quality meltdown on their flagship product? Did Intuit lay off the QA staff as a cost savings measure? Outsource the coding to a third world country where the developers never use the product? I would love to know what went wrong. Probably some valuable lessons there. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Jason |
I upgraded a month or two ago, it works OK for me. I don't do a whole lot with it.
Really, I could still be using Q99 happily. Online banking integration is the only significant change that I think has happened in several years.
I guess that's a strange sort of problem to have - you dominate your market so the only way to continue to make money is to sell new versions with useless features |
| Sat 21 Feb | Ryan | I worked for a small software vendor with a decent-quality product. When we wrote the next major release, all hell broke loose. It took us almost 18 months to completely fix it and regain our customers' trust. Here are a few reasons why it was such a problem: 1.) We had no architectural design for the largest new feature. It started as a UI prototype, to which we kept adding features, until boom, it became the shipping product. 2.) We hired a firm to do some pretty advanced usability testing, and came up with a lot of places which needed help. We then brainstormed new interface design internally and coded it. But we never went back and had external users test again, nor did we have any formal usability testing performed on the new version. As a result the new version suffered from *different* UI flaws which were just as bad. But to long-time users, they were even worse, because those users already knew their way around our old flaws. 3.) We had almost no written specs. As a result, when we thought the product was 'complete,' upper management would review it, find major issues, and require us to rewrite major portions of the application. This pushed us later and later, which meant... 4.) We didn't have enough QA resources available. No dedicated QA staff. Not enough time for developers to QA it, because we were so late finishing coding. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Mike Treit | I've never understood that argument about companies making money by selling new versions with 'useless' features. If nobody wanted the features, why would they buy the product? Because they're stupid? I give the person shelling out their hard-earned money more credit than that. More often than not, new features get into products like Office as a result of direct customer feedback, and the products sell because people want the features. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Steve | Curious. I just read an article in Business 2.0 about how they have the hottest CEO in tech. He goes on in the article about how he used his Sigma Six (or whatever its called) stuff to revitalize Intuit. Quicken....running your business....into the ground. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Rob Walker | I happily used Quicken from around '96. Upgraded to Quicken 2000 to get the new features and rapidly gave up on it. I tried going back to it recently, but the online features no longer worked (it claimed they had 'expired'). That most have been in the small print I didn't read when I bought it. So I've switched to MS Money and so far so good. On a related note I use TaxWiz for (Canadian) tax filing (taxwiz.ca) as it is downloadable, cheaper than QuickTax perfectly adequate. When I bought a copy online this year the credit card charge came through as Intuit. There is absolutely no mention on their website that they have been bought out by Intuit. I wonder how longer they will market two 'competing' products? |
| Sat 21 Feb | TK | My wife runs all but one of these with Quickbooks: http://tk-jk.net/jk/clients.htm It's our bread and butter. She usually has at least 4 versions running - 00, 01, 02, and 03 right now. She pays $650/year for premium support; it's worth every penny. Upgrades usually go well but she, wisely, is the ultimate late adopter. Thanks for the warning. Every new client seems to have some requirement that QuickBooks is missing. I should say that she can make QB do about anything but QB could make some quirky things easier to set up. As the person who keeps her computer running and safe, I'm in awe of what it takes to support multiple versions the product. Bookkeepers get very uptight when it's time to print paychecks. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Sam Livingston-Gray | OP: Do you really need the online banking features? I have 2001 basic and I just manually reconcile by alt-tabbing back and forth between my online transaction history and my reconcile window. It only takes 5-10 minutes every 3-7 days. I've never been particularly impressed with Intuit's products or their business practices, especially not since registering Quicken 6 with the address '[my name] \n No Snail Mail On Pain Of Death' -- and then, months later, getting a credit card offer with that name and address printed on the image of a gold card. ;> Still, I'm to the point where I need to send out invoices and manage payments, and I'm not aware of anything that sucks less, so I'll probably wind up buying QuickBooks too. |
| Sat 21 Feb | The real Entrepreneur | We've used QB to run our software company for about 7 years now. Currently on Version 2002 (we're very very late adopters). Never had any real problems, although my wife (who does the accounting) occassionally complains that it does wierd stuff (like a transaction gets categorized differently than she thought she set it, etc.). Not sure if that's operator error (which I've done myself) or a bug in QB. Support hasn't been the greatest, although we've not needed it yet. $150.00 for financial sofware to run a $160k a year business seems like a pretty good deal to me. I'll be wary of 2004 version. |
| Sat 21 Feb | hoser | I recently switched from Microsoft Money to Quicken at the start of 2004. The main reason was that I was fed up with how hard it was to get Money to integrate into Turbo Tax. Possible but a pain in the neck. New year, new finance records. Anyhow, it works very nicely for me. One thing I did find had to do with Money. I had been using Money 2000 (I think, perhaps it was 99). I had a brand new copy of Money 2002 already installed on the PC. I thought it might useful to try the new copy of Money already on the computer. ARGH!! You cannot even use the damn thing without signing up for a passport account. What a load of crap. Another Microsoft PM smoking crack. |
| Sat 21 Feb | Joel Spolsky | Quicken is not the same as Quickbooks. A couple of posters here seem to have conflated the two, although they are similar products both from Intuit I believe they are completely different code bases. |
| Sat 21 Feb | O Canader | Rob (& any other canucks): Yes Quicken does own TaxWiz. Over the years that have also bought out WinTax, HomeTax and CanTax (personal) each of which were of reasonable quality. I have personally used each of the major brands (TaxWiz, WinTax, HomeTax, CanTax and QuickTax) and this year I am trying Griff Tax. That leaves UFile for next year. My favourite so far was HomeTax followed by WinTax -- both of which were bought and buried by Quicken. I have no idea what Quicken is doing with the IP from these products. It sure as hell was not added to QuickTax... So far GriffTax simple is OK. I haven't finished the year end for my wife's small business yet so I don't know how good or bad that will be. For simple taxes it works very well. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Greg Hurlman | I don't know about Quicken, but one of Intuit's other products, TrackIt (trouble-ticket tracking, among other things) has been one of the most unstable products I've seen in action. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Rich | (Re: Intuit products) I've noticed this phenomenon as well, from MacinTax in the early '90s or so to TurboTax and Quicken more recently. I've noticed more bugs in later versions, and decreased usability. And do we need to mention the MBR thing? I know developers that won't touch their products again because of that! Happily, I can say that the latest Turbotax was pretty good--fairly easy to use and stable. They sure had some problems, though. They used to employ more usability folks than the norm; I don't know if this is still true. (re: track-it) I looked at this product a few years ago, didn't know it was bought by Intuit (I'm reasonably certain they weren't owned by them at the time). It looked like a fabulous product. But man, the bugs! I'd have this thing running in the background and I'd have my machine crash within about an hour, every time. The evaluation I was doing ended fairly quickly. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Rob Walker | 'O Canader': thanks for the pointers about other tax software. I'll try one out next year if its still around. I wonder if this leads to a viable business plan: 1. Write tax software 2. Be bought by Intuit |
| Sun 22 Feb | Not an Intuit Fan | No idea as to why Intuit has experienced a quality meltdown, but it isn't limited to Quicken. Quickbooks is at least as buggy. Actually, I'm not sure that this is new behaviour - going back to version 6 (or maybe 5 was the first version we used) Quickbooks was the program that crashed badly if you had any network instability (still does, but not as regularly) - despite advertising five user access over a network. It was also the program that could not reliably import the same file twice. And it is the program that gets slower, and slower, and slower as you add transactions. Have a lot of inventory? Not only will searching for inventory take many minutes, but so will searching for anything else. Bugs in Quickbooks have cost us hundreds of dollars. Incautiously activating the multi-currency feature (obviously too soon), not all of the reports reported the same currency. When I say that, I mean that if you do a tax report covering multiple currencies, sometimes it 'forgets' the invoices are multi-currency, and reports as if they were all the base currency. And this isn't consistent either, so you have to view the details of every report before trusting the consolidation, and match each detail with the base currency amount that you expected in order to be sure your numbers were right. Of course you can't return to single currency mode. And heaven forbid if you decide to use an outside payroll system (after they changed their payroll subscriptions to force you to subscribe to the actual software as well as payroll - a nearly 300% price increase, plus you get to be a guinea pig for all their new features and bugs with each new version of the software, which is automatically rolled out with the payroll). If you use an outside payroll system, you have to set up new payroll accounts. If you use the internal payroll accounts, even though the transactions appear successful, they don't show up on the reports. The sad part about all of the above is that the previous software (Simply Accounting) that we used randomly deleted entries (actually usually only half an entry, which is worse). So Quickbooks was superior software. Part of Intuit's problem (I think) is the fact that they have so many different code bases for essentially the same application. The Canadian version of Quickbooks does not have the same code base as the American version (for instance). Another part of the problem may be that the migration from traditional app to browser based app wasn't particularly smooth. They have also purchased a ton of companies and integrated their code (supposedly). I suspect said integration had some quirks that needed (needs?) working out. It seems to me also that much more effort has gone into nifty copyright protection schemes and automatic updating (some of which silently disable previous features - argh!). And figuring out how best to force your customers into a subscription mode instead of a 'buy our new software when the customer wants to' mode. I admire Intuit at a business level - they have done an incredible job at weaning their customers from a one-time sale to re-occurring revenue streams. But their methodology has also really turned me off as a customer. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Kentasy | I use a human being (not me) to do my taxes. Highly recommended. :) |
| Sun 22 Feb | Christopher Wells | > If nobody wanted the features, why would they buy the product? Maybe it's not trying a matter of trying to persuade people to upgrade: maybe it's a matter of, if you don't have new features (a 'new release') then you can't get people to publish reviews of it again. |
| Sun 22 Feb | Sam Livingston-Gray | Okay then, since Quickbooks is starting to sound really awful, does anybody have recommendations for another application I can use? I mostly need to create detailed invoices for hourly consulting and sales of a shrinkwrapped app; tracking my bank balance is not necessary since I have an older version of Quicken. (= |
| Sun 22 Feb | MacSqueeb | Anybody try GnuCash? I currently use Q2001, with which I am satisfied, but the machine it's on is nearing the end of its life and re-installing on a new machine means 1) finding my Q2001 media, 2) re-registering OR 2a) spending 1-4 hours on the phone to explain that I've already registered and just want to use a re-installed instance, 2a1) listen to the PSS read the part of her script about why I should upgrade, 3) try to get all of the updates installed so on-line banking will work, 4) restore current data from backup and pray. Here's what I'm wondering about GnuCash. Obviously almost no banks on earth support on-line banking with it, but it does claim to import and automatically merge .QIF files. My bank provides manual download of QIFs based on filter criteria that you select in a browser interface, so I've thought it would be cool if I could get in touch with someone in their development area to see if there was some way I could automate my selection and download through scripting on my end, which would come pretty close to satisfying my wants. I'm sure they would never give up that kind of information, but it's a nice thought. Anybody ever try anything like this? |
| Sun 22 Feb | fool for python | And they boast about their Six Sigma program. |
| FoxPro clobbered dBase | Sat 21 Feb | Albert D. Kallal |
Joel wrote:
In the late 80s FoxPro clobbered dBase in the market mainly on the strength of the fact that it compiled standalone executables. FoxPro had a linker. xBase developers pleaded with Ashton-Tate, makers of dBase, to develop or acquire a linker, but Ed Esber, reviled CEO of Ashton-Tate, refused to give them one. Learn from your own history. (Thanks to Rick Chapman for reminding me of history repeating itself.)Well, no question the distribution Kit for FoxPro was ONE big reason why I choose FoxPro over other products. Remember, also clipper also produced .exe’s also. In fact, clipper was a compiler that produced a real executable, where as FoxPro was interpreted p-code with a runtime. The minimum size of a FoxPro application was 750k + whatever your application used. So, in fact, FoxPro had runtime, and was p-code…not compiled. To produce an .exe, FoxPro did have a linker, but that is not really the real story here. And, point in fact, I never did figure out what the FoxPro linker did as you had to have a runtime anyway…and that runtime was a all, or nothing affair in terms of runtime size. However, the issue was not the fact of a linker..but the fact of royalty free distribution options for developers. That is a considerably different option, or issue. Developers wanted to write software, and NOT have the end user purchase dBase (or whatever). So, developers really were NOT asking for linker…but a royalty free otpion..and that could be runtime, or some linker. Without question, many developers really like Delphi due to a linker and an ability to produce nice small .exe files. However, this ability has not really saved the day for Borland and Delpi developers…..has it? When ms-access came on the scene, it also had to compete in the database market for developers who wanted a royalty free distribution option also. Without that option, NO developers would adopt the product. So, to this day…we still can distribute royalty free ms-access applications , but we sure never did get a linker. In fact, we got a fairly large runtime. So, both FoxPro and ms-access actually use runtimes. As a side note, the ms-access developers tools for office are now part of visual studio (office extensions). So, I have beg to differ on this issue. A linker is nice and foxpro used one…but the issue was a royally free runtime that FoxPro had and the means to package an application that won the day. This approach does not require a linker. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada kallal@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn |