1) The Properties Pop Up: If I click on a text item or something to look at the properties, edit something, and then click on another text item… guess what? 99% of the time I’m going to want to see the properties on that other thingy! Why do you close the #@*&! properties window every time I click something else?! And why isn’t there a properties tab docked to the side of the editing window?
2) How the heck am I supposed to keep up with all of these sections? These different colored groupings of text items just float around on the screen and overlap each other. Complex reports might have a dozen of these. Half the time that I try to slide one of these around to where I can work with it, I click a text item instead and drag it half way across the screen.
3) What on earth are you doing to the undo buffer to clear it out every five minutes? Does hitting the properties button really clear it like I think it does? You guys are driving me nuts!
4) Whatever it is that you’re doing with clicking more than once to cycle through all of the objects in the same spot, it isn’t working for me.
5) Can you guys spread the report definitions to any more screens than you have? Let’s see… we already start off on the wrong foot by the fact that we’re parsing some stupid text file to begin with. So I have to fool with both a text parsing screen *and* a layout screen. The layout screen lets me switch between First, Middle, Last, and Single views. I often have to fix things on more than one of these separately… or introduce weird errors inadvertently because I can’t visualize the interactions all at once– they’re spread across too many screens. Then there’s the fact that parent-child behavior is governed by one or more of 8 or 9 check boxes. And then there’s properties on the main screen that I can’t get to in the layout and text parsing screens! You guys have taken a simple concept and made it impossible to visualize. I hate you.
And while we’re on a related topic…. 5250 emulator, I’m talking to you, now. You’ve got cut and paste buttons on your tool bar but you don’t respond to the usual short cut keys on the keyboard. What the heck are you thinking! Half of what we do in IT is cut and paste crap that we haven’t automated, yet. With this one un-feature you make everything a pain in the hiney. I hate you.
And all of this “legacy” RPG code that’s still being maintained. Why do we have code to create these stupid text files anyway? I mean, if I’m going to do anything with them, I’m going to have to parse them back into tabular form anyway. (See Optio, above.)
And you stupid AS/400 machine thing. Why do you treat these text documents as second class citizens? “Spool Files” you call them. If I run a report, I probably want to do something with it. Why do you start these lame batch processes and then make me go dig around for it. If something went wrong, why do I have to go dig around to go find out what happened. You ever hear of a pop-up window? I never thought a program could make me yearn for J. Random Modal Pop-up Form, but you’ve done it!
And you stupid AS/400 application developers. Why do you think I like hitting the sequence enter, F3, shift-F6? Why would you think I would want to enter the exact same criteria followed by that sequence for 5 different reports? You know… couldn’t you have just coded it so that I enter the criteria once and then you try to run all of the reports with the same criteria… but then tell me if something is wrong and let me correct it right there maybe? Did you ever think of that? Enter, F3, shift-F6. Argh! It’s a fricking set of reports, not an assault rifle! I hate you!
Oh yeah… and if I make a mistake while entering stuff, here’s an idea: make a sound like breaking glass and stop accepting any input until I hit the control key! I love it! Bwa-ha-ha! Yes! You guys are fricking geniuses!
Oh man…. But you think you can learn Java and really start doing cool stuff? Do you realize how slow and annoying your stupid Java applications are? And how much of the AS/400 pain you perpetuate right in the web browser? Have any of you even heard of grid controls?
But Optio… Optio…. I’m sorry you guys got bought out. I was impressed with the quality of the tech support you guys did before that. And your training class was very well run. I appreciated that. All I’m saying is… I probably wouldn’t have needed a training class if you guys had made your program just a little bit easier to use. I mean… it’s like you’ve never seen Microsoft Access before or something.
But really, I hate you. I hate you all.
Learning Lisp 
August 27, 2008 at 8:43 pm |
[…] His thinking style is really more akin to the Sanford Meisner method acting school than it is to anything else. He gets into a problem space the way they “get into character.” And he truly *inhabits* the problem space. He literally organizes his brain into a model of the problem. He spends enormous amounts of efforts to adapt his tools to his personal approach of thinking. He can’t discuss data or requirements verbally– he has to put it into something like Microsoft Access and sit there with a couple of key people looking over his shoulder. (Access is highly visual… and he can “feel his way” around complicated sets of data with it without explicitly thinking about what he’s doing.) Similarly, a Unix type prompt gives him god-like powers: he is everywhere in the system at once and can operate on just about any file without having to dig through an overwhelming number of screens and applications. Yes he’s highly visual in his learning style, but he’ll do everything he can from within something like Emacs if he can get away with because changing context between a dozen mediocre visual IDE’s based on different idioms will sap his will to live– particularly if any of them are poorly designed. […]