I'd have to completely agree on that one. CW R6 is, in my opinion, even
worse than the infamous Borland C++ 4.0 release for Windows.
Not that it will change anything, but I think it would have benefited
Metrowerks to acknowledge that it is inexcusable to ship a product that
includes a resource editor which cannot edit and save bitmaps. No online
help, broken support links, odd debugger and IDE bugs all solidly suggest
that R6 should never have been released.
Granted, healthy, well run companies generally do not ship truly crappy
products. The true cost of shipping garbage, in terms of customer support,
hacks and patches, lost customers, etc. is always way more than the
development costs deferred. Companies ship junk when they are under some
type of pressure.
Obviously, the past cannot be undone. Further, if financial pressures push
you to ship crap, you are not going to be able to eat still more development
costs in correcting it. Still, even if MW must charge for an upgrade,
making a token piece offering to R6 owners (a slightly lower price for those
upgrading from R6, a coupon for a free upgrade to the NEXT (8?) release for
R6 owners, etc.) would have made good business sense.
You see, if MW says, 'We admit it, it was a piece of shit. We're sorry,
we've cleaned up the mess. We can't give it away for free, but we are doing
what we can...', they are at least acknowledging a mistake and alluding that
they have learned from it. Pretending that R6 is just part of the "work in
progress" and a normal CW experience seems like it might dissuade a lot of
people from upgrading or buying in.
-jjf
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven McMicken [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, December 17, 2000 11:24 AM
To: Palm Developer Forum
Subject: Re: CW r7.
I wanted to add my 2� to this discussion.
IMHO, MW released CW R6 for no other reason than to fulfill their obligation
to provide a free upgrade from R5. As a software product, R6 should not
have been a release, it was too buggy. But, because MW is a large software
company, they are allowed to release buggy software, as suggested by the
Salon article that Tom Zerucha referenced in this forum.
According to what you're saying, Ben, just because I've worked hard on
software to fix bugs and add features, I can go ahead and release it and
charge money. I don't even have to use POSE to make sure my programs run,
just work hard for a long time! However, if this is not okay for me, why is
it okay for MW to do it? Because they're a big software company who has to
pay lots of engineers? Surely an endorsement for the "don't worry, be
crappy" software development credo.
Before ruffling too many feathers, I want to add that the MW support people
who help us on this forum are great! They do a great job, in spite of the
software they have to support (sorry, couldn't resist)!
The bottom line is, I get annoyed with CW nearly every time I use it, mostly
due to bugs in the CW IDE. I sometimes get annoyed using Visual Studio,
also, but it usually ends up being a setting, or my software.
There's a double-standard in software development here. Developing for
Palm, we have to meet all sorts of requirements in order to obtain Platinum
certification. I think this is as it should be. However, I wonder if the
Palm OS could meet the equivalent of their Platinum certification. I'm sure
that MW CW for Palm could not.
One other point, CW is a software product, not a process. I pay for the
software product to work, MW pays for the process. If their process cannot
produce an acceptable product, tough for them, I shouldn't have to pay for
their faulty process!
Regards,
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: Ben Combee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: palm-dev-forum
To: Palm Developer Forum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2000 5:09 AM
Subject: Re: CW r7.
> "Bryan Nystrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:33185@palm-dev-forum...
> >
> > So, it sounds like outside of USB debugging support (which will mainly
> > benefit hardware developers because most developers probably use POSE),
> > there isn't any new features in R7. (I don't consider an improved "find"
a
> > feature, just catching up with the more mature editors). $190 for bug
> fixes
> > that should have been in R6 (or is that R5, because I remember the same
> > upgrade scam being pulled from R5 to R6). Here we go again.
>
> Come on -- the CW people are working very hard to add features and fix
bugs.
> Saying that $190 is too much for a year's worth of work put into a product
> seems petty -- its like saying that you should get all the upgrades from a
> 2001 car in your 2000 car because some stuff didn't work well.
>
> I also think that you did get quite a bit of value in CW 6 -- they did
issue
> bug fixes with the 3.5 SDK update, and even ones after that with the
> debugger updates. At some point, they have to shift from supporting an
> existing version to putting in features for a new version. Having worked
on
> their 2.4 compiler (updated from the 2.3 compiler in R6), there were
several
> man-years of work put into improving the C++ front end, making the IR
> optimizer perform better, fixing loads of bugs, and so on.
>
> CW is a process. It gets better, and its driven by feedback. Engineers
> aren't free, and you have to pay for the work done to really improve
things.
>
> --
> Ben Combee
> Veriprise Wireless <http://www.veriprise.com>
>
>
>
> --
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please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/tech/support/forums/
>
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