David W. Fenton wrote:
On 1 Nov 2007 at 2:22, Kurt Gnos wrote:
Fix its old bugs, but better reprogram it from scratch, using new
technologies
This is a really terrible suggestion. If you think the bugs in Finale
are bad now, wait 'til you see the new programmed-from-scratch
Finale. Consider the case of Netscape, which chucked its entire
codebase and started from scratch. The result was that for 5 years,
there was no new Netscape browser, and the world moved on and
Netscape lost its market share. Joel Spolsky explains why it's bad to
chuck an existing codebase and start from scratch:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Quote:
Netscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta. There
never was a version 5.0. The last major release, version 4.0,
was
released almost three years ago. Three years is an awfully long
time in the Internet world. During this time, Netscape sat by,
helplessly, as their market share plummeted.
It's a bit smarmy of me to criticize them for waiting so long
between releases. They didn't do it on purpose, now, did they?
Well, yes. They did. They did it by making the single worst
strategic mistake that any software company can make:
They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.
I didn't read the article but I'm sure the part you quoted makes the
salient point, but it seems to miss one variation to that scenario. One
need not abandon continued support and incremental progress on the
existing codebase while doing a total rewrite in the background. It is
possible to hire extra developers to work on the new codebase while
leaving some of the existing developers to issue interim patches to the
existing product so that the public doesn't need to know that a total
rewrite is going on behind the scenes. Then when the newly rewritten
code is ready for prime time, they just have to announce a new version,
no delay, no absence from the public's mind.
It's quite possible to be successful at it -- it costs money, certainly,
but it's something auto makers do all the time. They keep on bringing
out annual "upgrades" to existing models until a whole new model is
finally ready to present to the public, then they present the new model
and decide either to make it an addition to their offerings or to remove
an existing model which isn't doing very well and put this new model
line in its place.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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