David Ziffer (10/14/2010)
... American industry is losing vast sums of money due to the poor design, inefficiency and high error rate of the software that it pays people to develop. In my opinion, easily half the running apps today are dismal design failures whose shortcomings are not obvious only because most American management is basically uninterested in either application design or quality control ... and because there are no obvious alternatives. ...
and
It seems to me that all of American business is potentially poised for a smackdown comparable to what happened to our auto industry.
I believe the "smackdown" has started but the alternative is faring no better. When the small engineering company I worked for was acquired by a large corporation, my development team was disbanded by corporate decree that software development had to be outsourced. Efficiency, quality and our high performance user front ends disappeared as Indian code factories cranked out so-called industry standard apps. The "corporate" goal to reduce admin user time per technical report succeeded (10 mins. to 7 mins.) while ignoring professional user time (30 mins. to 120 mins.). The defense was that the outsourced app "met industry standards" and complied with corporate policy for development. Of course the people who decreed this policy will never have to use the app or take responsibility for the reduced productivity of the professional staff.
The net result, in my opinion, is to produce low quality apps with the illusion of lower costs. Your approach can change that, but it is not complete. Good development tools can still produce junk, faster and cheaper, whether they are used here or in India. That being said, at least good development tools allow the designers to focus on what makes a good application, and it isn't the hand-wired vacuum tube breadboards they are designing now.
I'll certainly give RAP a fair try. It looks promising provided I keep in mind that meeting the criteria for a productive application (from both a user and maintenance standpoint) is still my responsibility.