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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

My University released a web based timetable system that was absolutely shocking - it was an ASP.net based site with the kind of unfriendly interface you expect from a 1990's era intranet site (hint: utterly utterly horrible, it produced one timetable PER MODULE rather than a single combined timetable and every time you selected a module it would refresh the page). I was hungover the day before term started and rather than use that system I hacked together an easier to use alternative from my bed using python + flask in literally 60 minutes and released it[1].

The administration went crazy when hundreds of students started using it and asked me to take it down. While its not as impressive as something made at Yale it seems to be a common theme, I wonder if other universities suffer the same issues. Could be a market opportunity.

[1] http://timetables.tomforb.es/

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ASP.net? What sorcery! My undergrad website was developed in classic ASP. Our version control was copying files to a networked shared folder.

For an example of how utterly fucked classic ASP is: it has no API for accessing file uploads. If you code it yourself, it disables all of the rest of the parsing (query string, form variables, ...), which you then also have to code yourself. Not to mention the whole "hasn't been supported by Microsoft for a decade" thing.

Who would want to upload files via the HTML standard? Shouldn't you be using some sort of SOAP API with an ActiveX control? Or maybe the users should login to their local ActiveDirectory server and transfer the file to a shared folder via SMB/CIFS. /s

The hair on my neck was raising up until I got to the /s

Well played.

If he wrote a few lines more before getting to /s, could the sudden electrostatic discharge fry your computer? ;).

Goodbye Macbook Air as I throw it across the room :)

Thrown by the electrostatic discharge, I presume.

Please elaborate

I've seen several schools decide to implement mandatory functionalities using ActiveX...

You know the thing that forces you to use the most dreaded program of all times...

Edit: I hope you were /s'ing

>You know the thing that forces you to use the most dreaded program of all times...

lotus notes?

Internet Explorer.

Hey bro, come back when you have 4 years classic ASP with IE6 requirement on your back.

The most advanced data structure was a array that you had to re-size by hand. Terrible.

Second year University of Hull compsci student here, would just like to thank you for this - it's so much more efficient to use than the official intranet version.

Very interesting! It is a Scientia product. I used to work for a competitor.

More coming soon....

> Could be a market opportunity.

Perhaps, although I've heard that universities typically (however unfortunate it may be) like to buy huge ERP installations that cost millions but include integrated timetabling / scheduling.

Then I guess it IS a market opportunity. :)

> I wonder if other universities suffer the same issues. Could be a market opportunity.

Yes and yes. Both the schools I've been to (the local community college and university) have horrible slow Java-based interfaces that haven't been updated in a decade. I have to admit that those lousy systems were part of what motivated me to get into programming in the first place.

I had the thought, but not the hangover and subsequent willpower. Made a half-hearted attempt with Semantic MediaWiki.

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