Streamer apps critical

@moonwatcher

Banks would not be using this approach or most global companies.

But yes comments are still best practice and now frequently in user exits... depending on the application. 

A story just for you, on commenting. I was implementing a global SAP system. Its base was a couple million lines of code. I had a team of about fifty people working on it, a number of of consultants for over a year. We went live. We had a really bazar and urgent issue. Don’t remember the issue. But, my lead programmer / manager and I were reduced to scrolling through thousands of lines of code and associated user exits at 2 am in the morning. Finally after a couple hours... we found a line changed. There is a comment: "I am going to hell for this, I know I shouldn’t do it, I will regret this" and the programmers name is time date stamped. We just looked at it and broke up in anger / laughing and said, "Yes you are!, you SOB". The programmer was in Belgium and we were working in the US for the go live so he was not immediately available. So a few weeks later were were having dinner with about 15 people in Europe and with the offending programmer. I got up and said I want to toast the person in this group nearly shut the company down, I am sure that he will recognize this comment: "I am going to hell for this....etc" while looking right at him. He turned deep red. He knew that to find that, there had to be a huge problem and that it would have taken hours and hours to find it, It was funny then... not some much when the company couldn’t ship globally.

@moonwatcher

I have no idea. These days there are a couple of camps of developers, The professionals, trained in structured development using standardized tools. Then the net has nurtured a huge number of "wild Wild West" multilingual coders and developers that patch together stuff in all sorts of the latest fad of tools. Because lots of small businesses needed web and app development these home schooled folks had so much business that they started businesses and hired people and produce spagetti apps and all sorts of tools. It’s a mess. Some of these businesses have gotten huge.

I was an senior IT executive for a global company. I needed a little work done in the Portland area had my local systems manager go out to get bids. Each was more bazaar than the last. We wanted and extendable shell to allow easy extensibility and maintainability. They could not even understand the job. We got back bids from $95K to $290K using a half dozen or moire tools. The shops were a bunch of guys with couches and snow cone machines that had absolutely no idea what structured development was. It was hysterical. I am sure a lot of small businesses are really spending a fortune on IT that is a mess.

We finally had to go to Seattle to find a professional programming house to do the job. It was a real eye opener.

Sounds like Aurender should be the choice.

@moonwatcher 

The skill difference among software developers is huge. There are individuals and organizations that couldn't program a simple calculator in six months, and some that could do it almost before you finished describing what you want. 

It's true. I own Aurender, and they have a great app. But a number of my friends have bought other streamers, some over $10K and they have very poor apps. 

Having been in software development for much of my life I can attest to the fact that programmers do not naturally gravitate towards user friendly applications and interface software development is not usually a core strength of a company that produces hardware. 

So, all in all, not surprising. 

Even Aurender, who I really like and are very customer friendly struggled for many months during the most recent upgrade. Fortunately the end product is good now and getting better.