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First, there's the Notes client itself. Lotus had envisioned Notes as an end-user tool. The end-user would create their own databases and maintain them. Ridiculous, yes, but that explains a lot of features of the Notes client. Like a web browser, the client belongs to the user...not the developer. As a developer you have next to no control over menu options that are available at any given time. While that certainly falls under "horrible development platform" it's also bad for the user because they have a myriad of functions without any idea of what they do. So when developing applications you have to always contend with what the user might do that you can't control, such as opening up the preview "pain".
As a development platform, I think IBM stopped developing the UI after version 5, with just minor additions after that. Blatant MIAs...field formatting (a user can only enter numbers, for example, and nothing else,) and code execution on field change as a user is typing. Those two options would have easily save millions of lines of code. Also, a date field that can only be populated through the picker. These are such simple functions, have been available in other development systems for DECADES, and yet, Notes doesn't provide them. Again, falls under "horrible development platform" but that translates to a horrible user experience. Users HATE HATE HATE to spend time entering data (be it a minute or 1/2 second) just to be told that they entered the wrong data. A good interface prevents the bad data from being entered, and will also flash the field hint or do something to try to help the user if the user does try to enter bad data. That's an interface that works WITH the user...not against him.
At the moment I develop and manage a complex application where everything is done by LotusScript. There are no bugs in the code, but that doesn't prevent processes from failing. I get errors such as database (DATABASE!!) not found, fulltext index in use, oh and my favorite, an "Object variable not set" error on Source.Document.ParentDatabase in Querymodechange. Seems to happen once every 100 thousand edits or so. The environment itself has grown so complex with so many interdependencies that it's difficult to create complex processes that run with 100% reliability WHEN THE SERVER IS UNDER A HEAVY LOAD (that's an important distinction.)
If you claim industrial strength, that's what has to be provided. I've got workers in the field calling in to check-in and start their clocks...I can't have these agents throwing DB not found errors at those moments!
So I humbly submit that in my opinion the application platform is indeed horrible.
Feedback response number WLOO84XJFT created by ~Julia Feztoosterader on 04/28/2010
I disagree...
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. . . . . . I disagree... (~Fred Xanjumima... 28.Apr.10) 
