Puzzled...
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You know the type, Microsoft release a new product, let's say .NET 1.0 and people will say: "ho it's unproven technology, I will wait for the next version to consider it" Later on Microsoft release .NET 2.0 which is (admitedly :-D) an improvement. And then the same people say: ho, ok, it's proven now, let's start to use.... 1.0!?!?!? But, admitedly, 1.0 was not good enough (clearly compared to 2.0) so why a new version give people confidence to use the previous (and inferior) version? When it's really the latest they should use... I ask that because I met a few people lately (having job interview) which basically wait for version 'x+2' of the framework to be confident to use version 'x+1'. While, basically, 'x+2' is a fix over 'x' and 'x+1' so it doesn't make much sense to use it as a clue to use 'x+1'. Do you see what I mean? How do you explain this behavior?!? (OK, maybe I made it up a bit, after all they have other reason such as: our customer base don't support this version of the framework, hence the question is more targeted to sys admin than to developers....)
Super Lloyd wrote:
But, admitedly, 1.0 was not good enough (clearly compared to 2.0) so why a new version give people confidence to use the previous (and inferior) version? When it's really the latest they should use...
OK, I don't agree with these "geniuses". Of course, you're missing something too: MS actually realeased 1.0 in early 2002 and then shortly thereafter they released version 1.1 (early 2003?). Version 2.0 didn't come around until late 2005 and as of late 2007, we're still really waiting for Version 3.0 (& 3.5), both of which are slated for release in early and mid 2008. The quick turnaround on the 1.1 release was to address the "early adopter syndrome" you've just asked about :) However, to explain, there is often an underlying self-preservation motive that is hard at work here. For many years, it's been common practice in big industry (particularly with unions) to simply ignore The Next Big Thing (TNBT). These are often the same people that won't touch Vista until SP1 (or SP2 or some arbitrary timeline). There are lots of reasons for this, both good and bad: 1. New Technology is expensive: I can't just "roll-out" *TNBT* to my 1,500 desktop PCs. The average company has dozens of custom-built or industry specific apps that may or may not be technically compatible with TNBT. What's more, the IT team usually has no way of testing the changes, b/c they don't even know what the app really does. i.e.: I can't "upgrade" my accounting team to Vista without first testing their accounting suite, but I also can't test their accounting suite, b/c I'm not an accountant. This basically creates a deadlock on using any new technology until it is desperately important to do so (and even then, lots of big businesses are still extending old COBOL apps, and many businesses have just completed the move to XP in the last 12 months). 2. Long-term tech: by extension to the point above, when a "Big Co" moves to a new technology, they need assurances on both quality and long-term durability. Historically, when version N comes out, it's filled with new features and with new bugs. So Big Cos have the tendency to use version N-1 which has less features but usually contains all of the bug fixes from version N. This makes the system "more stable". By the same measure, Big Cos need tech that's going to last for a decade or more b/c it's so expensive to change/update things. Once a product has reached a second or third version, the likeli
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You know the type, Microsoft release a new product, let's say .NET 1.0 and people will say: "ho it's unproven technology, I will wait for the next version to consider it" Later on Microsoft release .NET 2.0 which is (admitedly :-D) an improvement. And then the same people say: ho, ok, it's proven now, let's start to use.... 1.0!?!?!? But, admitedly, 1.0 was not good enough (clearly compared to 2.0) so why a new version give people confidence to use the previous (and inferior) version? When it's really the latest they should use... I ask that because I met a few people lately (having job interview) which basically wait for version 'x+2' of the framework to be confident to use version 'x+1'. While, basically, 'x+2' is a fix over 'x' and 'x+1' so it doesn't make much sense to use it as a clue to use 'x+1'. Do you see what I mean? How do you explain this behavior?!? (OK, maybe I made it up a bit, after all they have other reason such as: our customer base don't support this version of the framework, hence the question is more targeted to sys admin than to developers....)
Nothing puzzling there. By the time v2 comes out, everything else works with v1, and there are a zillion web-pages that explain how to get around v1 problems. So if you go for v2, what you're doing is taking on a whole new batch of compatibility problems that no-one has yet had the time to solve.