this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
819 points (99.4% liked)
Programmer Humor
35949 readers
152 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I dont think that poor UI programming for dedicated programs is an argument for browser based solutions.
I have issues with poorly programmed UIs in browser based tools all the time.
Tbh it kinda is, because the browser gives the end user more control, since you have extensions and access to the underlying html. You can get around most stupid UIs with little effort, but on desktop you're doomed
Only if you're bad with computers
I don't see how being good with computers helps
Desktop apps are easy to navigate, focus on the program via HWND and target whatever control is needed, then either get the data or set the data
That's not the issue here. And that relies entirely on them being implemented well.
Just like the web
That’s fair, and I think a lot of the problems with that software was the internal developer/administrator for the software (I think it marketed itself as Open Source but was probably more accurately Source Available to customers) had taken it hostage with no one else allowed to touch it. I think it had become the proverbial million lines of undocumented spaghetti code that had guaranteed a permanent job for this guy because if he left the entire business would fall apart, including an inability to bring in revenue. Everyone knew he was a problem, except perhaps his boss, the CFO. When our companies merged they were originally supposed to join us on NetSuite (not without its problems of course but definitely better than the other software) but the hostage taker supposedly convinced the CFO that NetSuite wouldn’t be able to produce a report the CFO liked and we wound up moving to theirs instead. It was also supposed to save money by having lower user licensing costs. They brought in an outside consultant for our transition because the internal guy was too busy but then it turned out the internal guy was doing a bunch of non-standard stuff that didn’t work with the consultant’s design and the internal guy had to redo it anyways. When I left two and a half years later the company had spent millions on the transition and two different additional major pieces of software (the second replacing the first) trying to replicate what we’d had in NetSuite but was still lacking much of that functionality.