Re: Special upgrade treatment

"Alessandro D. Petaccia" <alexos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:b507d15lgeodbpc7o6n9k23rh7290d7c35@xxxxxxxxxx
| On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 20:38:40 -0600, "CWCunningham"
| <charlesw-at-blackfoot.net> wrote:
|
| >(7.5) C was still not what I will call my money's worth.
| Call me an interloper, but what's wrong with 7.5c? I mean, sure, it
| does have the well-known amount of bugs, but "not worth the money"
| seems a tad excessive...
|
That's a reasonable question, but since I gave up on Newtek's customer support,
I no longer log issues, I just find different ways to get things done, and move
on. According to Newtek's website, C has "over 300 bugs" more than D. Though I'm
currently running a hybridized version of D, I actually spend more time
exploring alternatives to Lightwave. Whether something is "worth the money" is
subjective. When Chuck Baker says, "What's beig said about 8.3 by a good many
customers is that it is in fact the most stable version we've provided since
5.6.", I see I'm not alone in recognizing 7.5x as a mediocre series of releases.

|
| >And D, though still available on the website, is broken in a way that makes
it
| >useless to myself and many others.
|
| That one was a mistake.
|
| > During my decades in programming...
| >and immediately, and I've taken pride in turning them within the hour. 1 hour
| >doesn't even dent my ability to turn out new content, and my customers have
| >never been unhappy for more than an hour.
|
| I think there's absolutely nothing in LW that can be fixed in 1 hour.
|
You may be right, but if that's true, it's likely a big part of the problem.

| As a seasoned programmer, you should know how it feels when you find a
| bug in something that you haven't written, but that's actually been
| written 2 years and 6 releases ago by someone who's now unavailable,
| and that's been modified and tampered with by someone else 2 releases
| ago, and so on and so forth. It's a nightmare.
|
I hear what you're saying, but you should recognize that this isn't some rare
disease that bites few programming shops. Every company that produces production
quality code has to deal with these issues, and there are mechanisms that can be
adopted to alleviate much of this pain. For instance, my policy of fixing all
bugs immediately upon discovery makes it a rare case indeed that flaws are
discovered in 2 year old code. By the time a title is 2 months old, it's had a
number of maintenance releases and been certified bug free by 2 programmers, 2
designers, and 2 quality controllers. Any bugs discovered after that are
discovered by customers, and are dealt with immediately, and with the same
rigor. Chances are very high at this stage that no-one looks at the code again
until it's redesigned, and the process begins anew. Even ugly old code that's
fifteen years old can be a snap to work with if it's commented with the idea
that someone else may have to fix it someday. If it's too ugly to maintain, it
gets rewritten. These concepts are nothing new, and they're not always easy to
adopt, but customers eat it up and never go anywhere else.

| I'm not saying we should be happy with bugs, of course, but after the
| painfully long hiatus between 7.5 and 8, now Newtek does seem to be
| trying - see the prompt 8.0->8.2 transition.
|
I applaud Newtek's efforts, and my vocal dissappointment is not designed to tear
them down, but to inspire them to improve. They have the potential to become the
top dog in their market. They have a lot of loyal customers, and get many
compliments for their strengths. They probably don't appreciate people like me
who poke at their sore spots, but in a very real sense, my feedback is as
valuable as that of two cheerleaders. I look forward to the day when I can say
quite honestly that I'm a satisfied Newtek customer and recommend their product
wholeheartedly. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here.

| >I'm not buying the 8.x releases, though the $250 offer did merit a "take it
or
| >leave it" coin toss. Your own forums paint the picture vividly enough for my
| >tastes.
|
| I work in architecture and I couldn't find a single reason to get 8.0,
| until Fprime 1.5 came out with that nifty "works a hell of a lot
| faster in 8.2" feature that made me cough up the upgrade money at
| once. It really depends on what you do, I guess...
|
I would have loved to take up that $250 offer, but I told Chuck I was skipping
8.x, and the coin toss helped me keep my word.

| ADP.

--
CWC
============================
It's not that nice guys finish last,
They have a whole different notion
where the finish line is.
============================


.

Relevant Pages

  • 17 years before recovery, and the other side of the helpdesk is, umm.., as expected
    ... betting shop is a sports betting office in a typical British street, ... While one of our lesser-loved customers from ... The helpdesk is, for the most part, efficient. ... bugs, and detail said bugs to sufficient depth for the programmers to ...
    (alt.sysadmin.recovery)
  • Re: SAL, Auto_Text_IO release
    ... Debian is very well behaved if you upgrade between ... Libraries that were bleeding edge ... If I deploy a server at a customers site and just firewall it ... are very few bugs in it, ...
    (comp.lang.ada)
  • Re: Perform Thru/Go to vs. Perform - Compile Speed
    ... >>and customers with such large programs must sometimes do what is ... a thing" is irrelevant when it comes to what a compiler encounters. ... the bugs being mentioned were "not an infrequent ... restictions -- it's difficult to support a rewrite just on accounta it looks ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: [40K] 3000 pts of Bugs for review.
    ... > making the small bugs more expensive. ... >> they're one hell of a lot more useful now and well worth the points. ... marines and even termies, as well as the assault warriors tearing things ... so I know about nid shooting. ...
    (rec.games.miniatures.warhammer)
  • Re: Decompiler.NET reverse engineers your CLS compliant code
    ... Please identify them again for me since I don't know what you are referring ... The 2 bug reports being left are minor sure but they have only been ... >reported to show that your tool has bugs because you claimed it doesn't. ... customers reported them to us. ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)