My Adventure as an ADM Beta Tester

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2702

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-02-09 17:53:12

Yesterday my adventure as an ADM beta tester came to an abrupt halt when Eric, self-styled “CEO” of ADM the company, advised me that my contributions to the discussion must conform to the governing standards of unctuousness. No, he didn’t put it quite that way. What he said among other things was, “I’m afraid I - and some of my colleagues at ADM - find your tone demanding at times.” This reference to “colleagues” in what seems to be a two-man partnership that contracts with temporary East European programmers and with a part-time secretary should give you something of the flavor of this group.

I pretty much knew my comment would do me in. I posted that ADM had “blundered” when it failed to provide an easy way to back up all the files in a data structure from day one. That did it, together with my comment that with its undocumented menu command saying simply “Manual Backup,” ADM had “misled” general users into thinking they were backing up more than they actually were. (Actually, whenever I had brought up the need for an undo command, Eric had commented on the excellent data protection ADM offered, keeping five back up copies, but not mentioning that they were backup copies of something less than all the data.)

Separating from ADM, the company, should actually improve my ADM experience. It should even allow me to be more objective about ADM the program, if not ADM the company. I confess that my misgivings about the program were partly fueled by dissatisfaction with the way the development *process* was run. This amounts to a bias, I suppose, in that I lack similar information about the development process other software may suffer, although I cannot believe that the ADM milieu is typical. I will probably comment further on ADM the company, because I think the process of development is a relevant consideration, and others might know more about how development proceeds elsewhere. The ADM milieu, in brief summary, is constrained by the need of the “CEO” to be constantly complimented about the program and to downplay or ignore criticism. Participants appear motivated mostly by wanting features they personally need, which they tend to equate with the needs of the general user. I have seen no evidence of an overall plan for development. There are timetables, but by a plan I mean a rationale as well as a program. Infrastructure is ignored in favor of multiplying the flashiest features for the least cost—that’s my take, anyway. By infrastructure I include such matters as the robustness of the database engine, the ability to back up data, and other safeguards such as undo in the tree. (Notice that this infrastructure was present from the beginning in Ultra Recall, in preference to frills like hyperlinks, which they will add in a future version.)

Anyway, it was educational, if more in the way of observing how pathological narcissism affects the development of a computer program than in how programs are best developed.

Stephen R. Diamond

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