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Another observation from a mind uninitiated in some things "I.T."

"I want it to do x. Make it do!"

From IT friends, I hear this phrase a lot when it comes down to trying to service their customer/department/organization. They have a sit-down with the person and look at their request. Inevitably, the person or group or board say's "Make it do."

Sometimes, I bet some non-IT people with access to critical data that they want to "make it do" end up trying to "make it do" themselves... And, when the IT department says "It can't do that" they point at their lovingly crafted, but an offense to nature, Excel or Access sheet, grunt, and nudge the screen with the backs of their hairy hands, saying "Ook! I MAKE DO! YOU MAKE DO!"

Then, the IT guys are forced to try to make them understand that they're not supposed to do that... That, in some real universe, what they have done is a mortal sin. That, somewhere, there is a Natural Law that says "Thou Shall Not Make Do What Thou Hast Done!"

Yet, still, the brow furrows, the lips purse, and out comes "Make do."

It's pretty common.

What people sometimes dont understand is that there is a whole world behind what they are doing, and most of the times, when IT says it cant be done, its more, it cant be done safely, or it cant be done because its not worth to develop what is requested with the estimated time it takes to do it.

When you have been working on this for a little time, you start to understand that its better for you and for everyone to not explain why it cant be done, it cant be done, period. This way you avoid a lot of problems trying to explain to someone that most of the times is totally ignorant to computer stuff behind what he does at his home why you dont want to do it and why.

As my boss says, people want answers, not explanations.

korio wrote:...When you have been working on this for a little time, you start to understand that its better for you and for everyone to not explain why it cant be done, it cant be done, period. ...As my boss says, people want answers, not explanations.

^--- This.

Some people have just enough knowledge to know that something can be done, but they don't have enough knowledge to understand why it shouldn't be done.

It's better just to say "No."

CBJ wrote:

Tamina wrote:Using another language would be one of the bigger out of many necessary steps to improve that.

No. The language isn't the problem. The problem is the environment. Single-user documents and local databases are not the place for important business processes.

We obviously see this problem from two different perspectives. You are a developer at a small company, I am an engineer at a world market leader.

Most companies don't allow access to programming tools or getting them is a monthly long bureaucracy act - speaking from lots of experience here. From an (elitist) IT standpoint, people are idiots and must be protected from themselfes by limitting them as much as possible. Something you never experience as a developer at a small dev-company.

Without a proper devkit, people then start using Macros to automate data-processing as their only option and eventually expand on that. Instead of limiting or removing that option it should be made better with a proper language; proper APIs; and an office-integrated, excel-independent development environment and programs.
Or in other words: Together with office, a (i.e. Python) IDE with official Office APIs should be delivered.

No matter how horrible you make Macros to use. If people can automate processing thousands of entries rather than doing by hand, they will.