On 19 Feb 2009, at 11:09, Walt Nelson wrote:
Everyone who is trying to use v11 is so focused on putting out individual fires, that they don't see that the entire forest is smoldering
Hey, you sure have conjured up some vivid imagery there. Certainly captured my imagination.
Now, evertone seems afraid to say publicy what some are saying to me privately:
That's 'cos they know they'll get batted into 'business list oblivion' on the official forum. Not a problem in itself but before 4D took over the list hosting the old business list used to be quite lively. You got the feeling that there were a lot more subscribers (I think it was just called the 'public' list then - can't quite remember). I don't know why nobody wants to post on the biz list these days. They seem to think that nobody's listening so it results in 'rant bombs' getting periodically dropped on the tech list causing antagonism to mods & subscribers who want that list kept 'clean'.
Now we're hijacking Aparajita's list to discuss 4D business topics - how much more off-topic can you get than that :) ?, albeit I agree with you that these debates are healthy and necessary.
On 19 Feb 2009, at 11:09, Walt Nelson wrote:
this upgrade has been a disaster
Wow, do you really think so ? I also have read all the list responses and didn't get this impression. Mine was that the problems were in proportion to the benefits and there have been many reports of performance gains, approval for industry standards support etc etc. v3.0 was pretty bad - you couldn't reliably run the new 4D server till about 3.2x but it was a technology leap that worked in the end. v6 wasn't rock solid till v6.0.6 r9 (I even remember the exact point revision that worked :)). 6.8 was so shaky I avoided it completely. 2004.5 has been rock solid for us, so that's the background. Microsoft development products are even worse for quality control in my experience.
I've got a huge network to upgrade presently, I'd like to think I was delivering solutions (mainly more scaleability) not 'new' problems. They've already asked me for quotes for licensing and my own time. I don't really want to quote a fixed price for time. Major risk factor given we're heading into the unknown.
What would I like 4D to have done differently? GRADUALLY introduced all those new features
Yes - I agree this would have been the alternative. I certainly don't need all the new stuff and I'm not going to be using SQL, but I suppose that it's a difficult call because people also give 4D a hard time for charging upgrade prices for minimal new functionality.
You wouldn't get much argument from developers across the board that reliability is about top of everyone's list of priorities. It's a complex product and only getting more complex so from that point of view I'd be happy to take less functionality for more reliability. I also would very much underwrite your call for more open discussion of business issues. That problem can't all be blamed on 4D for taking over the list hosting, there are plenty of places where people can post but they don't. e.g. the biz list on iNUG or the google groups list which is active from time to time.
In the meantime, thanks to Aparajita for indulging us on here. Peter _______________________________________________ Active4D-dev mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/mailman/listinfo/active4d-dev Archives: http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/archive/active4d-dev/
