RE: Re: New version of WDSC -- WDSCI-L

Vern,

I think a key difference is that you have a lot of happy users of your 
product.  I know because we use it.  The only time we ever need or want 
something new from you is when we need a new version for compatability 
with something like V5R2.  With WDSC, I think it is a different story. 
Many of us want to use the product but run into a number of discouraging 
problems that make it difficult.  If we felt fixes were possible and 
forthcoming it would ease that problem.

Two comments on the fix issue. 

1)  No one would be forcing anyone to install the quick fixes, you could 
always wait for the tested service packs.

2)  My new bug scenario was just a "hypothetical problem".  Hopefully, 
most of the time fixes would be just that -- fixes.

Mark






Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
08/07/2003 03:53 PM
Please respond to Websphere Development Studio Client for iSeries 
 
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        Subject:        RE: [WDSCI-L] Re: New version of WDSC


Thanks for the comments, Mark.

I think I'm talking about interfaces to applications, whether IDEs or 
graphics editors, like PaintShopPro, which just went through a (from my 
point of view) considerable change in the interface - rearrangement of 
menu 
items, etc., not just new function.

I think it's important to consider the size of the "audience", as well as 
the impact on that "audience", when considering a change in the interface 
to any process. When I make a suggestion to change (using our CD-ROM 
Studio 
product) from using tape in the process of generating CD images, to using 
SAVFs - a different methodology with maybe 1 additional step for the 
eventual end user - I do it knowing full well that this may not fly. The 
reason is, don't make the customer's (the customer of the developer using 
our product) experience too different from what they've come to expect.

And we don't quickly change the look/feel of our products.

I may be a Luddite - getting me into some of the newer things has been 
like 
pulling teeth, sometimes, albeit usually because it has been more than a 
little inconvenient, whether because of installation quandaries, broken 
sample programs, new methodologies, whatever.

I regret to say that where Windows apps are concerned, I've had more 
trouble installing an IBM app than those of almost any other company I 
know. iSeries Express is one of the most trouble-free, but VA for Java was 

a nightmare.

Anyway, that's another topic. Your comments are helpful.

On the matter of quicker fixes, I'm not sure where I stand. I see your 
point, yet I believe that having to respond to a new bug generated by a 
fix 
is not what we want to do - nor do we (or anyone) want to introduce that 
kind of disruption. I guess I sit somewhere between the Linux model, where 

a dedicated team responds quite rapidly to bug reports, vs. the IBM model 
that usually has an extensive design/review process that takes a while 
longer yet is usually pretty rock-solid.

Vern

At 10:33 AM 8/7/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Vern,
>
>I am not completely sure I agree with you, but that could just be because
>you didn't go into any specifics.

-snip-

>I think what you are really talking about are the applications 
themselves.
>  I do not see the changes as a problem, but a necessary evolution as the
>tools try to refine themselves and provide better capabilities.  If these
>tools were all drop-dead great to begin with I would agree with you, but
>right now I want them to evolve and get better and I am personally 
willing
>to bear the brunt of that if I can get a better end result.

-snip-

>I am really grasping at straws here, because I am not entirely sure what
>you were trying to say, so let me just conclude by addressing the one
>comment of mine that you quoted.  What I was saying, was suppose that IBM
>tried to deliver us a fix for the Outline view crash.  I am saying that I
>would rather have seen them try to deliver a fix, and in the process
>create a new problem, as opposed to making us wait 8 months under the
>"veil" of QA.  The same QA that didn't catch the problem to begin with I
>might add.
>
>Mark


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