Why Lotus Domino?

Summary

Why Domino?27th January 2024 I'm a Domino Developer. While that has not been my official job title for some years, I continue to use Domino to develop web applications to this day. It's certainly not a popular option and when it comes up in conversation people are mostly confused. Some had assumed Domino was a retired product no longer in use while others have never even heard of it. I get the impression some of my non-technical friends are still trying to work out what pizza has to do with computers. In May 2021 to coincide with the release of version 12 of HCL Domino, I started writing an introduction to Domino for those who had never considered it as an application development platform. I was going to explain how I used Domino, what parts I liked and which bits to avoid. But as usual I got distracted, never finished and the moment passed. With my plan to explore what it would take to build a replacement for Domino, it seems a good place to start would be to complete that post explaining what I like about Domino and make it clear what I'm trying to recreate and what I'm trying to avoid. What is Domino? Let's start by clarifying what Domino is. Back in 1989 the Lotus Development Corporation released Lotus Notes. In 1995 IBM purchased Lotus but the branding and the name remained unchanged. In 1996 a server add-on called Domino was released for Lotus Notes 4 which allowed the rendering of Notes applications as web pages. When version 4.5 was released, the web engine was integrated into the server and from this point on the client was referred to as Lotus Notes and the server as Lotus Domino. In 2012 IBM dropped the Lotus branding so it became IBM Notes and IBM Domino. Then in 2019 IBM sold the product to HCL and we arrive at the current names, HCL Notes and HCL Domino. Personally I tend to drop the company name and mainly use "Domino" in conversation. I use this as it has less stigma and is technically correct for the way I use the product. When I do use the term "No...