[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It's possible that I got it because of decades doing things like support in corporate environments.

A look at what they offered triggered my "Oh, my. This is powerful but complex. If I were deploying it to users I might wish to provide pre-configured instances covering the basics that could be further customized if needed." reflex.

The issue is that some problems are inherently complicated, and don't have simple solutions. One example might be uses for the ubiquitous Excel spreadsheet program. Serious financial people do a lot of programming in Excel, because it can rice, slice, and dice the numbers any way you like...once you understand how to program it to do that. Gaining that understanding is a long term process.

When you find yourself dealing with if, then, else cases, you have gone past drag and drop and point and click. (And the problems are in what you pass to IF as the condition to be met, what you pass to THEN as the action to take if the condition is met, and what you pass to ELSE if it isn't.) You are attempting to massage data, and if you don't have a clear idea of how it is currently structured, good luck on restructuring.

(I recall a story about a legendary programmer in the early days. He was given an assignment, and for a while, people looking in his office would see him drawing diagrams on sheets of paper. Those diagrams were documenting transitions in state, and the various transitions that might be made and the state things would be in before and after. Once he felt he had a clear idea of the state of the data and how it might be transformed, he wrote the program on paper, then typed it into a terminal and tried to run it. He had to make one change which was correcting a typo when he entered the program on the terminal. After that, it just worked, because he started with the data, clearly understood how it would be structured coming in, and what transitions needed to be made to produce the desired form coming out.)

And my spider sense tingled when I saw that they were also incorporating a macro processor. I consider that a separate area, and would be inclined to deploy it as a separate program. Adding it onto an existing program just multiplies possible support headaches.

I may be starting at shadows here based on bad experiences in the past and it may not be the problem source I might anticipate. I hope not, at least.
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Dennis

No, no, I agree with you--and all powerful programs/apps/whatever have steep learning curves, agreed. It reminds me of the old EZPublish days, when EZP was the only CMS around that actually could do everything--a home page, articles/blogs, forums, eCommerce, etc.--but, if you didn't already know how to make it sit up and bark, well, you were hosed.

Their forums also had that whole "all clever lads together" thing going on. If someone would ask, "can you do X," their reply would be YES. (Assuming you CAN make it do X). The forum members had that same smug attitude.

And it's not like there are PEX experts sitting around waiting to be hired, either. So, I find myself with a program that I don't have time to learn, without a staff that can make it work, and nobody to hire--and I don't even have a clue where I'd start to learn, either. Yes, I know that If/Then/Else has its ins and outs and all that...but it's JUST bloody logic. That part, I can do. But in viewing the I-T-E interface...there's not an indicator in hell that will tell you what the bloody hell goes in the THEN place or spot or action. A macro? Programming code? A magic Badger that directs traffic? Seriously, it's like it's a secret.

Anyway, enough bitching. I'll just find something else, but yes, I'm bloody annoyed about it. Sure, it's powerful. I get that. Sure, it's not meant for Word button pushers. Get that too. But their whole attitude, that "oh, tough cookies if you were stupid enough to pay us for it when you didn't already know how to use it," really pisses me off.

Hitch