Four notes to bother any programmer...

[greek_artemis]

Any of you out there computer programmers? Yeah, you know who you are. What about web developers? I know there are some of you too. What about course software developers? Can I get a shout out from my D2L buddies

Comments

[lambda_calculus]

It's kind of a tragedy but a lot of software work contracted out by government, health, and so on is garbage because the contractors a) obfuscate the code so that you can't just ship it around for improvements even if you work the granting of source code in your contract and b) they design it so that the software is barely usable and purposely obtuse, this way you have to pay more hours to 'improve it.'

But I suppose there's also PeopleSoft software, so it's not just sketchy mercenary coders...

[greek_artemis]

For the record, this is the online course delivery system used by the University of Toronto...

[lambda_calculus]

Education too. I can't think of any school whose online schedule/content management solutions isn't a nightmare. Even UW gets screwed by its purchases and it supposedly spits out capable developers by the dozens.

[flying_squirrel]

Yeah. I'm sure there's lots of blame to go around here. The developers were probably pretty useless, but even if they were brilliant, you can't expect a Cadillac if you're only willing to pay for a Lada that you want delivered by tomorrow afternoon. The just-use-your-first-name-for-your-password administrators probably aren't a lot of help either.

Sadly, this sort of nonsense is often good enough for a lot of people... They just accept that software is crappy and get on with their lives. Even if some hotshot developers were hired on to fix this mess, when they started asking around what people wanted to improve, the most common answer will probably be "Uh, I don't know. It works for me... Don't change anything too much." Kind of frustrating.

[greek_artemis]

The funny thing is, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed with it if I hadn't been in CS and done web dev before going into teaching. The bulk of my colleagues know very little about technology (at least in the elementary sector).

*lesigh*

[mlik]

Do not taunt the happy fun ball!

We're better

[anonymous]

If they were using our product, they wouldn't have the first, second or fourth problem. I suspect the third is a result of a poor choice rather than poor software.

Snuggles

Re: We're better

[greek_artemis]

Of course you're better. I posted this most of all for you.

I *wish* they were using D2L software...