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The technical forum of the NBN Trust for use by the Network. It includes discussions and announcements on the NBN Atlas, Recorder 6 and Indicia |
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Forum → Recorder General Chat → Good software takes 10 years
Thought folks using Recorder might be interested in this:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html
:)
Cheers Charles,
A fine wee article, not least that Mistake No. 2 "Overhype" is possibly the most identifiable fault with Recorder software. Although the major contrast with 'our' product is the commercial comparisons. Coming from over a decade working in the restaurant industry, the adage about being in it for the long term is particularly poignant. That the majority of active users are still effectively beta-testers is not lost on me either.
However for all the gripes, I still fervently believe that R6 is a good product and that the potential for achieving its aims are hugely significant for so many fields.
Look forward to seeing you next week, Cheers fer now, Rob.
Hi - for info
Highly reccomend Joel Spolsky's book 'Joel on Software' to anyone who works with software at all. Makes some very good points but also a fairly easy read for the most part.
Sarah
Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC
I would like to recommend David Gelernter's book "The Aesthetics of Computing" to anyone interested in this topic.
To quote from a review;
"This is an impassioned plea to take aesthetics seriously in computing, both software and hardware. Beauty in technology lies in a fusion of simplicity and power. As Gelernter points out, most top rank mathematicians, scientists and engineers emphasise the importance of beauty as a guiding principle for their subject. So why isn't this claim taken seriously?"
The software crisis has been with us since the 70's and it's getting worse (IMHO). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_crisis
Cheers, Dave.
Couldn't agree more Dave. This is why Apple excels at what it does (making premium computers and consumer goods) and part of what makes a language like Ruby so compelling (it doesn't just work great, it i looks great too). As a designer who has crossed over into a more technical discipline (I was a print designer, then web designer, now an IT officer), I've often despaired at how little stock is put into aesthetics and overall quality of experience. Most of us enjoy beautiful things in our lives: our homes, our cars, our natural environment, and yet the computer industry, until Apple gave it a kick up the butt with the original iMac, seemed to think it irrelevant. It has taken until now, nearly 10 years later, for Microsoft to catch up and release something that overtly acknowledges aesthetics, and even then Vista doesn't look that good (and it's worth remembering, that it took a good 6 or 7 years for Apple to refine the look of OS X). Office 2007, on the other hand, looks fantastic and, with all due credit to MS, acts and functions brilliantly. It's a true piece of innovation and design excellence. It's the first piece of MS software I've used in years that actually put a smile on my face and makes me want to use it.
I'll check out David Gelernter book as this, as you can probably tell, is a subject very close to my heart.
Charles
I definitely agree, though in my experience its easy to justify spending money on IT to get the required functionality, but difficult to justify spending money on getting it to look right. Recorder is a classic case in hand - getting funding for new features is likely to be easier than getting funding to implement a new 'ribbon' interface, for example.
At Dorset Software we're well aware that it takes a range of different people to make a good IT company. Not all developers are passionate about user interfaces, and not all developers are passionate about quality back-end code.
Forum → Recorder General Chat → Good software takes 10 years
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