"The product was very far ahead of its time. It was the first commercial client/server product."
"During this time, the developers at Iris used Lotus Notes to communicate remotely with people at Lotus. Halvorsen said, "Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality." For example, the developers needed to synchronize data between the two different locations, so they invented replication. "This wasn't in the original plan, but the problem arose and we solved it," said Halvorsen."
Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality.
The feedback loop of eating your own dog food is one of the greatest benefits a software project can have. Here the programmers weren't only users of the product, they were using it as an essential part of the development work itself. That's like putting steroids into your dog food and then eating it.
"During this time, the developers at Iris used Lotus Notes to communicate remotely with people at Lotus. Halvorsen said, "Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality." For example, the developers needed to synchronize data between the two different locations, so they invented replication. "This wasn't in the original plan, but the problem arose and we solved it," said Halvorsen."
From IBM's "The History of Notes and Domino" http://tinyurl.com/2b8wxk
"Inside Notes provides a single place where you can quickly learn about the architecture of Notes" http://tinyurl.com/ytjkf3 [PDF]
Note: I love how IBM's web site uses the famed Notes Icon as it's little Website icon identifier :)