Earlier this year, I put into production a new part of the UI system, using HotDraw. It allows the users to link two accounts by putting them into a "map" and drawing a line from one to the other. This causes a database update, cache refresh, yada yada yada. Users love it.
We have another project going on, our UI rewrite. This is being redone in Java, with a Web front end. It has to be done using the "anointed toolset", nothing else. I've known this was coming, which was the main reason I did the HotDraw thing. This is driving the Java guys nuts, because they don't have a similar tool with whatever cheezy toolset they're using. My users look at what they have, and say "But how come I can't just draw a line from one to the other like in the old system?"
My favorite complaint is "But you promised us we'd have everything we have now." They say "I meant you'd have everything you had at the time I promised it, not everything that'll ever exist."
And IT people wonder why there's so little sympathy for their jobs getting outsourced. When you utterly ignore users for years at a time, what do you expect?
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