This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Stability Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Since I've been developing some decent sized systems - the blog server and BottomFeeder - I've noticed a distinct tendency towards conservatism on my part. Back when I was a sales engineer, I was always using the latest code from engineering, and demonstrating right out on the bleeding edge. Now I've got systems in deployment, and I lag the leading edge - in much the same way that our customers do. This has been an invaluable lesson to me in my role as product manager - when you have running software, you don't just jump out and upgrade.

For instance - the blog server running this is actually a VW 7.1 based server. I'm only getting around to updating it to VW 7.3 today. Why is that? Well, I've had plenty of other things to do, and the server (modulo bugs introduced by me) has been quite stable and scalable. There's some interest in our marketing group in getting up to speed on blogs now, so I thought I should create some actual deployment tools (don't ask how I deploy a new blog now :) ) - and update the posting tool for the limited use case that they will likely want. If I'm going to start writing tools, I want the latest version of the product - so update time it is.

BottomFeeder has been closer to the latest stuff, but it lags as well. The downloads are all 7.2.1 based - I've got a 7.3 development image, and we've just worked our way through the migration issues (see the override post from yesterday). The difference between the two? I've been more conservative with the server than with the client tool. As I said, the server has been stable and scalable, so I haven't seen a good reason to make changes. All by itself, that little lesson is valuable - I can hear those words from customers over and over again, but it's a lot more meaningful when I run smack into it myself.

Ultimately, I've determined that any product manager who wants to really get it should build something with his product. If you can deploy it in some way, that's even better. Believe you me, you'll learn things that you can't easily understand any other way.