Re: Consumer Based Web Development

Aaron Bartell skrev:

Something to consider with any tool that requires specialized personnel is
that if you don't keep up to date then your labor pool shrinks right along
with your ability to get community support. I learned this first hand when
the Apache MyFaces version I was using slowly set into the sunset and every
forum answer I read just said "why don't you just upgrade to version x.x?"
instead of somebody telling me how to address my issue with the version I
was on.

The painful part about upgrading is that things break from version to
version. Makes one appreciate RPG a little more.

This has been described as Technical Debt. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt

Ward Cunningham first drew the comparison between technical complexity and debt in a 1992 experience report:

"Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite... The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a stand-still under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object-oriented or otherwise."

I think it is a wonderful term which everybody can understand.

For Open Source libraries this means staying up to date with releases (on a semi-regular basis). Tedious but the longer you wait the harder it gets, and things tend to break badly when you are close to deadlines.

But at least you have the source so you can open up and see WHAT goes wrong and how to work around it.

/Thorbjørn (who shudders at the MyFace 1.1.4 upgrade in the horizont)