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I just don't believe it. I don't have an MBA and never took any marketing
classes. But it seems to me that announcing, "sure our product sucks, but it
doesn't suck as bad as our competitor's," is a rather bizarre way of getting
new customers or making existing customers happy with their purchase
decision.
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If you haven't already read Nathan Rector's From the Inside column this
issue, I would strongly suggest you turn to the front of the magazine and do
so. He is requesting help in getting the word out that MultiValue is alive
and well and quite able to tackle your modern application requirements. It
is also very capabile of fitting into a "mainstream" IT shop having a number
of different platforms working together. But as long as there are only a
handful of us who write articles or blog entries about the kinds of problems
we have solved using our various MultiValue platforms and the techniques we
used to do it, as a community we are going to continue to appear to be much
smaller than we really are. Whereas other platforms have dozens of writers
publishing articles for various magazines, journals, and newsletters, in the
MultiValue world it seems like you see the same bylines over and over. Not
that there is anything wrong with seeing certain writers consistently
producing articles! But when those are the only writers you see, it gives
the impression that there must not be very many people using this thing,
otherwise you would see a lot more people writing about it and discussing
it. I think he did an excellent job explaining some of the issues and
shooting down some of the myths about what it takes to write an article. Now
I would like to add a couple of thoughts then share with you an idea about
how to make the process even less daunting.
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A while back, our Content Editor, Shannon Stoltz, introduced me to a book
by Rajesh Setty titled Beyond Code: Learn To Distinguish Yourself In 9
Simple Steps. It is targeted at the IT professional who wants to break out
of the rut of constantly rushing to acquire another skill (programming in
Python, for example) only to find out they have become what he calls a
"commodity"— just another Python programmer easily replaced with any other
Python programmer (at least in the perception of upper management).
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I think I set a new efficiency record this New Year. I have never been into
New Year's resolutions very much. With 365 days in a year, I don't
understand waiting for a particular one in order to make a decision to
accomplish something in the next 364. But, it seems to be a cultural
tradition, not unlike the ritual of eating certain foods on New Year's Day
in a magical attempt to woo Lady Luck or the Goddess Ifni to smile upon us.
Nevertheless, this year I decided to participate.
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Oh this is so not good.
I see that Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read
and learn language. That, in and of itself, is not particularly frightening.
After all, natural language recognition has long been one of the goals of
artificial intelligence research. It's not an easy problem to solve,
especially with English. Once you get past the simple subject verb object
construct — Spot bites Jack — things get real hairy in a hurry.
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For years I have avoided anything resembling a smart phone. I just never
saw the use in them. I have always preferred applications that did one thing
and did them well, as opposed to a single application that tried to do
everything and did them all miserably. I saw no reason at the time why my
approach to appliances should be any different. So I was quite content to
muddle along with my cell phone, my Palm PDA, my desktop computer, and my
notebook.
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There is an oft quoted saying supposedly from Mao Tse-tung. "There is great
chaos under heaven — the situation is excellent."
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I see QR codes.
But unlike the ghosts of dead people, these things are present in our
external reality. And I'm not alone. Lots of people see them, including the
attendees at the 2011 International Spectrum conference. You see them too.
Look up at the top of this page. See that square checkerboard thing? That's
a QR code.
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When it comes to application development, we are no longer in control.
Frankly, we never really were. But today it is almost impossible to continue
the illusion. It used to be that we — the information services professionals
— did everything for the users. (Some would say "to" rather than "for.")
After all, the way we saw it was that users were ignorant. Not only did they
not know what they wanted, but they were not versed enough in the mysteries
of Data Processing to even know what they needed. But we, the priests, knew
what they needed and how best to deliver it. And if the applications we
delivered did not match the way they worked or the procedures they used,
well, they were doing it wrong. (Sounds a bit like Steve Jobs initial
reaction to the antenna problems on the iPhone 4 doesn't it?) Forget the
fact that few of us in Data Processing had ever been a shipping clerk, an
accountant, or a warehouse manager; somehow we thought that we could design
applications that would bring order to the chaos. Just a little bit of
hubris, don't you think?
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Unless this is only the first or second of these columns you have read, you
are already aware that one of my hot buttons is getting rid of the green
screens in our MultiValue applications. I have repeatedly made the point
that having the most visible part of our applications using an antiquated
approach to user interfaces is not just an embarrassment — it is probably a
major contributing factor to why non-technical upper management kicks the
MultiValue system to the curb (and the MultiValue developers along with it)
and replaces it with something more "mainstream." If it looks like a
dinosaur, waddles like a dinosaur, grunts like a dinosaur, well then, it
must be a dinosaur.
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On a recent flight, I was flipping through a copy of The Economist
magazine. Not my usual entertainment material, but a guy has to have
something to read until they allow him to turn his Kindle back on. I spotted
a small article titled "Spare us the e-mail yada-yada." It was subtitled
"Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless."
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Before we explore this question, let me get one thing out of the way — the
obligatory New Year's resolution.
I will not write controversial column titles.
There. Done. And all in keeping with my tradition of starting the new year
off with a burst of productivity by simultaneously making and breaking my
New Year's resolution.
With that out of the way, let's return to the question. Who cares if
MultiValue survives? I don't.
Oh my, I can already hear the scraping of sharpening stones on steel, the
squawking of fowl, and smell the odor of tar being heated in the pots. I
should hasten to explain myself before it becomes necessary for me to go on
Amazon.com and place an order for large quantities of engine degreaser and
burn ointment.
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