Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: What is a Developer?

Author:Donald W. Larson
Posted:9/18/2000; 12:44:59 PM
Topic:Re: What is a Developer?
Msg #:21475
Prev/Next:21474 / 21476

And even when your feelings are hurt, don't let that stand in the way of getting your job done. Now, some people are customers, and that's a whole different ballgame. But we have some developers here too. And they have the scars to prove it. And our gratitude for sticking with it. It's not easy being a developer. I know. I know.

I purchased Frontier 1.0 in 1992 and later several Frontier Runtime licenses while an employee of A.T. Kearney. Using Frontier was a powerful way to reduce the tasks I used to have to do by hand on the huge Macintosh network.

In 1993 I started writing workflow scripts to control Macs in different parts of the world. Using ARA (AppleTalk Remote Access) and Frontier, I could connect to corporate networks running AppleTalk (under Novell) and send Apple Events to networked Macs via Frontier scripts. This was before the rise of the Internet.

I have a lot of scars for those battles with MIS and management over using such technologies. One day I told them they could remove Frontier solutions any day they wanted. The only condition was they had to hire five more people to do the manual tasks that my processes were doing unattended. That seemed to end the discussion in my favor.

I've experienced plenty of stupid management and very little great management in the last twenty years working with computers. Battles and scars are unavoidable in many situations in corporate life. For some reason I find that developers and computer technology people seem to get an extra dose. Hopefully that situation will change as time goes by.

Don




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