Re: VISTA and v11: A CAUTIONARY TALE

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
Active4D-dev@...
http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/mailman/listinfo/active4d-dev
Archives: http://mailman.aparajitaworld.com/archive/active4d-dev/