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How to develop software
Apr. 26th, 2014 05:02 pmHow to develop software:
1. Pick a popular, useful program.
2. Rewrite it from scratch with only half the features the old one had.
3. Add a couple of shiny new buzzword-compliant features.
4. Give it a completely new user interface using the UI toolkit of the month.
5. Add an import feature that doesn't actually import everything.
6. Launch the new version with great fanfare.
7. Discontinue the old version. For bonus credit, erase all mention of the old version from your website.
8. Whenever someone asks why the new version doesn't do something useful that the old one did, claim that the change is "by design" and then ignore them.
9. Go to step 2.
Today's particular rant is directed at Windows Live Mail, which is the replacement for Outlook Express. And is missing such fundamental features as a purge command for IMAP folders (without which it is actually impossible to delete emails).
Microsoft has also decided that instead of integrating with Windows Contacts (itself the replacement for the Windows Address Book), Windows Live Mail will instead use its own contacts directory. Which doesn't store anywhere near as much information as Windows Contacts does. So after importing the contacts I've ended up with email addresses arbitrarily (and usually wrongly) assigned as being the "personal", "work" or "other" addresses, except when a contact had more than 3 email addresses in which case it's actually created multiple contacts. With the additional contacts containing only the email address and not the person's name.
Except when it randomly chooses to import just an email address and not the name of a contact.
I'm close to just giving up on the whole thing and firing up Outlook Express in XP Mode, which despite all the hassle of essentially running a Windows XP virtual machine purely for email has the massive advantage of actually working.
1. Pick a popular, useful program.
2. Rewrite it from scratch with only half the features the old one had.
3. Add a couple of shiny new buzzword-compliant features.
4. Give it a completely new user interface using the UI toolkit of the month.
5. Add an import feature that doesn't actually import everything.
6. Launch the new version with great fanfare.
7. Discontinue the old version. For bonus credit, erase all mention of the old version from your website.
8. Whenever someone asks why the new version doesn't do something useful that the old one did, claim that the change is "by design" and then ignore them.
9. Go to step 2.
Today's particular rant is directed at Windows Live Mail, which is the replacement for Outlook Express. And is missing such fundamental features as a purge command for IMAP folders (without which it is actually impossible to delete emails).
Microsoft has also decided that instead of integrating with Windows Contacts (itself the replacement for the Windows Address Book), Windows Live Mail will instead use its own contacts directory. Which doesn't store anywhere near as much information as Windows Contacts does. So after importing the contacts I've ended up with email addresses arbitrarily (and usually wrongly) assigned as being the "personal", "work" or "other" addresses, except when a contact had more than 3 email addresses in which case it's actually created multiple contacts. With the additional contacts containing only the email address and not the person's name.
Except when it randomly chooses to import just an email address and not the name of a contact.
I'm close to just giving up on the whole thing and firing up Outlook Express in XP Mode, which despite all the hassle of essentially running a Windows XP virtual machine purely for email has the massive advantage of actually working.
