Shari,
I read "Getting Real" a PDF book from the folks at 37signals (they
did Ruby on Rails and Basecamp). They have a strong philosophy
regarding feature creep/bloat/etc. I wish I had read this earlier in
my career. I had the same experience you did and that countless
others have had.
Often it's better to keep a product simple and pure. If more is
needed, it might be another product entirely with it's own source of
funding (sales). We try and hold the line on features and
preferences. When we make changes, we favor the type that simplify
the product.
I also don't think it's a bad thing to start from scratch again
sometimes. The second or third generation of development always goes
faster and is easier to maintain. SmallTalk was re-written five
times. In such situations, if there are customers involved, they have
to have an easy path to cross-grade. We did that with Constellation-
to-Galaxy. We probably should have made it 2.6 Rev compatible sooner,
though.
Best,
Jerry Daniels
Makers of Galaxy - an alternate IDE for Revolution
http://www.daniels-mara.com
On Sep 18, 2006, at 4:31 PM, Shari wrote:
Jerry,
I wonder about this exact issue as well. I have a program that
gets feature requests continually. There is no end to the number
of features that can be added. Not long ago I put out the mother
of all updates, adding a very long list of feature requests. The
goal was to set this program aside for a good long while and work
on something else. It currently has more features than any of the
competing programs in its price range.
The logic was that if I fulfilled the most common requests and a
number of not so common ones, folks would be happy, more folks
would buy, and the "I Want" syndrome would quiet down for awhile.
This did not work. The "I Want" syndrome is alive and well, and
now they are just requesting more unusual features. Sales have not
gone up. They remain steady. I expected an increase in sales for
the increase in features. Sales remain the same. Feature requests
still come in regularly. So... I'm not sure there was really any
benefit to adding all those features. Except for some very nice
reviews on the downoad sites.
And the downside is... It took me away from another project for the
better part of a year. A project that I expect will sell very
well but which is still a long time away from final release.
Very frustrating!
Shari
Gypsy King Software
Josh,
I think the earlier versions of Constellation were actually quite
good, but I decided to accommodate every request (nearly) and
ended up with a product that was more difficult to use than intended.
Taking too much user feedback to heart and not sticking to my
original design resulted in Constellation being very powerful for
the folks who used it from its genesis, but not as easy to break
into from scratch. Thus as it got more feature-laden and
preference-constrained, less people adopted it, but it did have a
faithful following of hundreds.
Since Galaxy is now 2.6 Rev compatible, almost all Constellation
users have moved over to Galaxy which isn't as "in your face" with
its features as the latter day Constellation.
Best,
Jerry Daniels
Tool makers for the 21st century
http://www.daniels-mara.com
--
Gypsy King Software
Mac and Windows shareware games
http://www.gypsyware.com
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
subscription preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
