FWIW: DuckDuckGo ROCKS!DuckDuckGo bang syntax ROCKS! Even when DuckDuckGo itself doesn't rock, it let's you easily, and slightly more privately, search other search engines https://duckduckgo.com/bang so It ROCKS even when it doesn't ROCK!
The average Romanian IT expert/programmer speaks better English than most Americans. You'd be surprised about the quality of a conversation. And I'm not talking about tech...
No, I'm not kidding and yes, I am a Romanian; from Cluj-Napoca actually. Why would I be kidding? I know few developers which have difficulties with the English language. I know many that know the difference between "who" and "whom" or between "color" and "colour". I can't account for all, of course, that's why I wrote "the average", in an attempt to group them by their skills. Maybe I did exaggerate the part with "most americans", but I've certainly seen enough examples of English being misused.
The firm where I currently work has a rather huge Delphi legacy software. You'd be surprised how much is still being "extracted" out of if. The more modern (and better built, but I'm biased, as I'm part of the team developing it) web app, which is meant to replace the Delphi one, has not had the same success. It's picking up momentum though...
If it's better built then why hasn't had the same success? What are your metrics for "better"?
What does "more modern" mean exactly? I don't see that there's much value in pursuing design or implementation purity if the software isn't getting the same end user take-up.
The Delphi app has been continuously "enriched" with features and special cases, based on direct feature requests for each client that requested one. This has lead to the case where there are several thousands switches which need to work together, in every combination possible. They don't always work, by the way. The new app has selected the more relevant use cases and could be better structured and implemented. Modern means primarily a cleaned up UI, but also the dynamic way of customizing the GUI (defined per JSON and capable of on the fly changes for individual users or groups of users, instead of hard-code and compiled or yet another flag stored in the DB).
The clients are usually pleased with the web app but the project managers are a bit hesitant, due to the different installation process. The Delphi app has been sold/installed for well over 10-15 years and people are used to copying .exe files on a server. Copying files and .dll-s and tinkering with IIS seams to be less appealing...
The need to go "online" has been the driving factor for the web app.
It smells like the web app still has that new car smell. I'd guess that the web app will go through the same process of enrichment. The web app will get the special cases and direct feature requests and will eventually arrive at a similar state as the old application for similar reasons, just in a different implementation.
Spot on! This is not really something that the (our) developers can control. We're already seeing this. My point was that we could use the information gathered from the prior implementation and take better can and design the new app with a higher degree of flexibility, so that, when those special cases occur, we could, for example, change a configuration file, instead of the actual code.
My guess.. we're talking years of investment in a (presumably monolithic) "huge" Delphi system.
Either spend even more years adding the needed features while fighting the upscale hill.. (especially when introducing bigdata)
..or develop an alternative made out of simpler beasts: clean separation to avoid hydra scenario's. It takes time to beat that, but i see reasons to go away from a huge monolithic beast.
I don't remember hearing that the behemoth will be extended with large(-ish) new modules. It will receive several features though. The truth is that they can't just throw it out the window, especially with global scale clients still using it.
Having almost exclusively used Opera <= 12 back in the day, Vivaldi really reminds me of those days. The fact that it powerful and (apparently) stable, represents a plus. What I don't know, however, is if it will pick up momentum and become relevant...
I really don't like the Hollywood-style of describing the work on the fields: "But then, in another light, you see the tools of violence being carried into the fields: the steel crowbar, the ranga, for making holes in the earth, the axe with its bright and burnished edge, the cleft oak posts, the hoes, the hedge slashers – all the instruments with which management can be imposed. Cutting, controlling, slicing, hacking, killing: these are aspects of everyday existence". This is hardly a "Texas chainsaw massacre" pre/sequel.
Most of the people lack proper education. Everything "higher" as 4 school years is a "gift". The majority were children when WW2 broke out and saw their parents being striped of possession, such as lands. After the war came the communists, which did the same thing, again. These are people which have a deeply rooted passion for their ancestral land. The have, unfortunately, never learned to solve their problems in a civilized manner, because they haven't seen that in practice. They've mostly seen abuse and react the same way...
> never learned to solve their problems in a civilized manner, because they haven't seen that in practice
Oh they have. They've observed that the people with the most power (legal or otherwise), force, or money get what they want.
They've observed that the only way to not lose their land is to stand on it with weapons and physically confront those who would take it away from them.
It really depends on how far the physical confrontation goes. You can't farm the land from prison. That's the "best case", when they go to prison. If they're wounded, for example, and can't move, they become a burden for the remaining family members.
I do agree that they are filled with hopelessness with regards to the legal process of solving problems. This falls into the same abuse category of loosing their lands, with the exception that it's not by force, but by law...
The image is directly copied from the Trello website. I also find it a bit strange that I need to first provide my account in order to find out what the service does...
I don't think it's fair to compare the same browser (by name, at least) on two distinct operating systems. I believe that the sentence in question is biased by the use of any other browser on iOS, comparing thus iOS Safari with other browsers running on the same OS.
I didn't try to start an argument on Apple sabotaging it's competitors...
What I would give for a mobile device offering duel boot between Android and iOS.
I've invested heavily in both in terms of apps and usage over the years, not to mention dev and testing and can't bring myself to stick to one exclusively.
I also think it's an improvement but I wouldn't call it "huge". My biggest problem so far was the lack of "support". By that I mean that a simple to medium difficulty Flat Design project does not require a lot of transitions/animations work. This in turn means that the development time is kept relatively low. In contrast, Material Design emphasizes these visual features.
In my opinion, this framework is the missing piece for MD. I only wished that Google had thought of that and helped speed up the development process.
It's just my opinion, but I still think it's a huge improvement. The oversimplification of flat design sort of put it in an "uncanny valley" of sorts for user interfaces, in my experience. I'd look at a UI and really have to ask myself whether I should be able to click on an element or not.
