О приоритетах в мелкомягких кругах
Нашел на мсдн, теперь я понимаю почему и как у МС все так как есть сейчас!!!
I still remember to this day a conversation I had back in 1995 when I managed a development team at Peachtree Software regarding how much time Visual C++ and MFC were going to save us and, therefore, how much quicker we were going to get to market with our accounting system. It went something like this:
Me: The Visual Studio wizards will enable us to generate the framework for an application in seconds. We basically get all the user interface for free. Menus, status bar, a complete document/view architecture to separate data and presentation, toolbars, and so on. They even have things like file-open, print, and print-preview built right in!
Marketing: Sounds great. So how long will it take you guys to code everything?
Me: Considering we're getting all the UI for free and only need to plug in the accounting stuff, we could be done in 6 to 9 months. And best of all, the application will look just like a Microsoft Office application!
Marketing: Huh?
Me: Exactly. We get the subliminal benefit of our application looking like one of Microsoft's. This is especially important in that if we look like an Office product, it'll be much easier to get the Windows 95 logo on our boxes.
Marketing: We can't go to the marketplace saying, "Buy our product because it looks like other products." All accounting products have the same basic functionality. The only way we can differentiate ours is with the user interface. We're going to hire graphical artists that will design a completely customized user interface and then your team will code that. How long will that take?
Me: Without seeing the exact controls they design it's tough to say, but it'll probably double our work-at least.
Marketing: Then, you'd better get started.
Two years later, Peachtree Software shipped the first product that it had designed and created from scratch and I'm proud to have been a major contributor to that effort. Over the past 10 years, I've led the development of several well-known products from IBM, AT&T, and VeriSign that run on millions of PCs and telephones worldwide and during that time, I've always remembered that lesson: No matter how good your application is internally, if it doesn't stand out in a crowd and grab the user's attention, then it's not going to sell.
Therefore, as my first article for MSDN, I thought I'd focus on one of my favorite topics-and a technique we used quite often at Peachtree to develop those fancy UI widgets the marketing team wanted-developing custom draw controls.
I still remember to this day a conversation I had back in 1995 when I managed a development team at Peachtree Software regarding how much time Visual C++ and MFC were going to save us and, therefore, how much quicker we were going to get to market with our accounting system. It went something like this:
Me: The Visual Studio wizards will enable us to generate the framework for an application in seconds. We basically get all the user interface for free. Menus, status bar, a complete document/view architecture to separate data and presentation, toolbars, and so on. They even have things like file-open, print, and print-preview built right in!
Marketing: Sounds great. So how long will it take you guys to code everything?
Me: Considering we're getting all the UI for free and only need to plug in the accounting stuff, we could be done in 6 to 9 months. And best of all, the application will look just like a Microsoft Office application!
Marketing: Huh?
Me: Exactly. We get the subliminal benefit of our application looking like one of Microsoft's. This is especially important in that if we look like an Office product, it'll be much easier to get the Windows 95 logo on our boxes.
Marketing: We can't go to the marketplace saying, "Buy our product because it looks like other products." All accounting products have the same basic functionality. The only way we can differentiate ours is with the user interface. We're going to hire graphical artists that will design a completely customized user interface and then your team will code that. How long will that take?
Me: Without seeing the exact controls they design it's tough to say, but it'll probably double our work-at least.
Marketing: Then, you'd better get started.
Two years later, Peachtree Software shipped the first product that it had designed and created from scratch and I'm proud to have been a major contributor to that effort. Over the past 10 years, I've led the development of several well-known products from IBM, AT&T, and VeriSign that run on millions of PCs and telephones worldwide and during that time, I've always remembered that lesson: No matter how good your application is internally, if it doesn't stand out in a crowd and grab the user's attention, then it's not going to sell.
Therefore, as my first article for MSDN, I thought I'd focus on one of my favorite topics-and a technique we used quite often at Peachtree to develop those fancy UI widgets the marketing team wanted-developing custom draw controls.