TUTOS
"The Ultimate Team Organisation Software"
Sound like Lotus Notes to you? It does to me. This however is TUTOS, an open-source project on SourceForge.net. Scott Goette of Anglebar Solutions mailed me a link last week, knowing I would be interested, following my venture in to the world of PHP. Is it anything like Notes though? It shares some basic features, such as an address book, calendaring & scheduling, bug tracking, "fine grained" permission handling and mailboxes. But can it compete with Notes (can anything!)? Well, for me, the answer lies in how easy it is to extend its current features. No matter what I might say about Notes, I never forget how easy it is to produce quick results that meet requirements. Something tells me that won't be the case with a PHP solution. If I get round to looking at it in more detail I'll be sure to report back.
So, there you go, I think Notes is an amazing product. It might not appear that way sometimes but I really do. Which brings me to another of my stupid analogies: The Seven Year Itch.
A relationship with a product like Notes is much like a relationship in real life. When you first meet you're head-over-heels. It's all you can think about. How perfect they are. How you ever managed without them. When will you next be with them. You even stop looking at other girls for a while and insist on telling everybody you meet all about her.
Give it a while though and you're soon looking at the other girls again. You've spent enough time with your partner to have found all those little idiosyncracies that really start to bug you after a while. Maybe there's somebody better out there. More suited to me. Easier to live with. Dare I say it there may even be a brief affair somewhere along the way.
Then comes the Seven Year Itch. You have to decide whether to stay or whether to go. A decision we all have to make and one that will change the rest of our lives.
However, throughout the relationship, you always know that, when you really think about it, you couldn't manage without what you've got. And that is how I think about Notes sometimes. I might flirt with other software but there'll always be that special place in my heart for my "first love".
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--E<:|
That's beautiful man! ahh true love!
Thats sweet Jake, it is an amazing product indeed, just wish they would do a better job w/ marketing it.
Well, put most of the developers I know feel the same, I dabble in other technologies, but come back to Notes everytime. Its just so quick and easy.
If only IBM relised what they have got !!!
You forgot to close with "Be good to yourself, and each other".
:)
I've 'been with' Notes for 4 years. I'm not shopping for a ring just yet...
At risk of extending an analogy into the horribly inappropriate, sometimes a relationship is more interesting when you invite someone else to the party. ;-)
I've found that extending Domino and Notes with everything I can get my OLE hands on as well as causing Domino to serve up and even output precompiled code for other languages (auto generated vbscripts are a hoot) has made the relationship -very- educational as well as entertaining, and risking further damage to my reputation, profitable. >;-)
Nice! Bought a tear to my eye even!
Yeah, nothing like a threesome ... ;)
Are you still suffering bouts of delerium? ;o)
Guys, keep it clean ;o)
No Andy, I'm just slightly unhinged in general. Have you only just noticed?
I wonder if your girlfriend reads this ;-)
Lucky for me she doesn't Jens. She knows I have two websites but so far she's only managed to find "a yellow one" {Link} so I am safe for a while yet.... ;o)
Words of wisdom from Jerry. That's exactly what makes Notes so exiting for me: Not only are there points of contact with many other IT systems. Because of it's very nature as a collaboration tool, you're more than likely forced into interaction with these systems sooner or later. Notes can be a pretty effective platform not only to start programming with, but also to start learning about lots of other stuff that *will* run into.
I've been "doing Notes" for well over a decade now, and I tend to agree with the comments about how as long as the product continues to grow and embrace more things, then it won't get boring to us, either.
I've recently been spending a whole lot of time in the Domino/PDA arena ... who would have thought ten years ago that we'd be talking about putting mission-critical Domino applications on a Palm or PocketPC device.
Amazing.
- Rob
PHP, are large companies actually using it? I'm always under the impression that while it seems to be a good scripting language and you can do some great stuff w/ it, it is rarely used in the corporate world. Anyone have any experiences w/ php in the corporate world?
Not sure there are many corporates who use PHPs but I'll bet there are plenty of SMEs that do!
Jake, I know i'm being a moron, but what is an sme?
Small to Medium sized Enterprise
Nutter!
Jake -- well put. Over the last year, I've been doing more J2EE coding than Notes/Domino development. While I still have a found place in my heart for Domino, I gotta tell you...going to Java has brought a whole lot more scalability and definately better integration. Whenever I'm pressed to find some little utility class that needs to pkzip/ftp/smtp/etc... I'm usually able to find something out there. Package that with Apache (and SoundForge)'s projects such as Struts, and there's a nice little framework for development.
Granted, there's lots of techologies in this arena and who has time to learn them all, but I believe this is a stronger future than Notes/Domino or **gasps to say** .net development could bring forward. That said, I do see a brighter future with Notes/Domino as IBM starts to bring forward more products.
Lastly, if you haven't checked out IBM's eclipse project (or WSAD: built on Eclipse), check this out today. If my crystal ball is right, I think that you'll see a blended version of this IDE in the Notes/Domino future.
BTW --- I'm intrigued by the analogy that someone had to a threesome. Without the great business partner/Third Party support that Notes has, it would not be the same product. That's one <BIG> difference between Microsoft and even IBM.