Rob Reynolds - The Fervent Coder - All Comments

re: Warmup – Getting Started

Amir — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:02:32 GMT

I completely agree with Rob. Anything that helps me disconnect from Visual Studio is a win in my bucket.

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Chris Marisic — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:32:06 GMT

This is why I choose to develop targeting web applications.

There is no choice in upgrade. You use the current version of our service, or you don't use our service.

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Dan Puzey — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:21:57 GMT

Chrome, Firefox & co. are only good examples because they haven't broken anything yet. At some point there will be cause for frustration that you can't get back to Chrome 26 when Chrome 27 has broken something, or even just changed it for the worse.

I'm sure a lot of people would still be using 2-year-old Facebook, given a choice... For websites I'd argue that the only reason this applies less is *because* you can force an upgrade on users. That doesn't mean they won't vote with their feet too, but at least you know that your remaining users are on your newest package!

A further extension of the concept is that, in many cases, what is deemed "buggy" behaviour might be essential for the successful operation of a product. If there's a minor bug in an API that's otherwise critical, consumers will build their product to work around it. Even a genuine "fix" to that behaviour might well break the code built on it.

Which also highlights that this isn't just about *local* things, but about anything that you might consume... a web services API, for example, will come under this rule to some extent.

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Harry M — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:14:44 GMT

It applies to web application APIs, unless you are going to break all your user's client applications...

...unless you have the rarely-seen HATEAOS REST API and people have written the even more mythical ContentType versioned, HttpStatus aware, link rel following magical self adaptive web client*.

*AKA your user accessing your API via Firefox

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Erik — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:11:25 GMT

I agree with the sentiments in this post completely. For me, when producing software, it's kind of the Golden Rule. I frequently get a version of something, either as a library to use in my own code or just as a tool, and have no interest in upgrading. If it works perfectly for me as-is, there's risk associated with that, but no benefit, so why do it?

And, given that attitude, I tend to sympathize with users of software that I write.

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Rob Reynolds — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:59:35 GMT

@Marcus: Good point - in this context I am thinking of libraries and tools/ applications. Things that you bring local to your system. I'll update the post.

First time Chrome or Firefox breaks my experience with their silent updates, I can move on to another product. I can still speak with my feet.

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Marcus Swope — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:54:48 GMT

I think it would be useful to articulate what kind of software you are talking about. I just saw your comment after reading through the whole post and thinking to myself of all the great examples we have of software that DOES force users to upgrade to the newest version (Chrome, Firefox, Facebook, every single website and most SaaS solutions, etc...).

In your comment you said that websites and SaaS don't have releases in the same way. The same way as what? I'm confused what type of software it is that you are actually talking about.

re: Software Release Management - Why You Can’t And Shouldn’t Force People to Use the Latest Version

Rob Reynolds — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:48:16 GMT

Of course this doesn't apply to websites and SaaS. But then again, they don't have releases in the same way.

re: DropkicK–Deploy Fluently

Rob Reynolds — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:23:05 GMT

@jdn: This post was past due. I've been meaning to really talk about DK for a long time. It's a big subject to broach. :D

re: DropkicK–Deploy Fluently

jdn — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:45:28 GMT

There are so many different things that seem to merit review that I feel like I have to 'triage' them, so to speak, but this post tells me that I really need to give Dropkick a serious look.

Thanks for this.

re: RoundhousE–Intelligent Database Migrations And Versioning

Rob Reynolds — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:56:42 GMT

Thanks Joel! Corrected.

re: RoundhousE–Intelligent Database Migrations And Versioning

Joel Beckham — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:34:17 GMT

We've been using RoundhousE for a while, but just started deploying to Production with it last night. It makes our lives much, much easier. Thanks!

Also -- your first link after "What is RoundhousE?" has some extra characters in it causing it to not work.

Cheatsheet: 2011 10.11 ~ 10.17

gOODiDEA.NET — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:47:04 GMT

.NET .NET Math Library Wiki Markup Implementation in C# Web Bring your website to the next level…check

re: Let’s Get Chocolatey! Kind of like apt-get for Windows

Rob Reynolds — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:16:30 GMT

garyshortblog.wordpress.com/.../installing-nodejs-on-windows

re: Published Applications AKA _PublishedApplications

Darrell Mozingo — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:44:08 GMT

Dude, this is awesome! Nice work!