Why would you NOT try to manage all a Tech Start-Up's stuff in Coda?

[Bill_French]

@Johg_Ananda

A shipping company uses Coda to manage their orders/to-dos. They create an automation that when an order is completed it sends a Bill of Lading to the warehouse printer via the API using Google Cloudprint. This works for 8 months, then one day the truck arrives to pick up the $100,000 order but the BOL isn’t printed.

Okay, so these are hypothetical calamities that you are warning us and Coda about. Let’s examine these a bit…

• No system is impervious to the failures you are describing. Even systems that are 100% custom made and even domain-specific systems that are created specifically to print shipping labels can, have, and will fail.

• Any shipment process that is gated by a system crafted as an add-on to a document-centric app and cast in a mission-critical role will likely be carefully vetted, stringently tested, and probably scrutinized by many people. I would be skeptical if Coda was the winning technical choice for this specific example. As such, asserting that Coda would get a black eye for such a failure is probably a stretch. Does C++ get a bad wrap when a poorly-skilled engineer writes a bad printer driver?

• Every minute of every day there are dozens of users who pose as skilled technicians and through masterful convolutery create incredible sh*t-shows that people - the likes of you and I - must untangle. This is neither a new thing or anything that will ever likely stop.

@Johg_Ananda

… and dropping off the API will be problematic.

I still don’t have a clear understanding of this phrase. Describe the nature of a process that causes the API to “drop off”.

I certainly agree with all comments here that performance in a given expectation envelope is important and there’s no question the team has work to do.