Software products might have names that include the word “smart” but software is not “smart.” I’m taking the time to comment upon this due to the fact that someone used the search term “smart lims software” to find my blog.
Software does what it’s told to do by us humans. It’s rude to say this, but software is “dumb as a rock” as we’d say here in the States. Thus, if you start by expecting nothing at all from the laboratory informatics software you use, you can then be pleasantly surprised when it actually does do something.
However, software vendors do put much work into providing us with some number of features to their software. This still doesn’t make the software smart. All it means is that the software will provide the exact list of features the software vendor put into it and absolutely nothing more. Software doesn’t “think” it’s way out of a bug. If bugs are handled well by the software that’s only because the company writing it thought ahead to provide a practical manner of handling the error not because the tools used to develop it “smart” in any way, shape or form.
This brings me to comment on the tools used to develop the software we use. Some companies like to use different platforms and we hear much about .NET or Java platforms. Whatever your software vendor using is the one they claim is “best” and they’ll give you reasons why that is. However, while the tools of today’s software development platforms might have nicer interfaces than we had for past platforms and might have other nice features, software development is still hard and software is still “dumb as a rock.” Nothing I’ve seen indicates the near future will change this one particular fact.
Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/