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From: tomr@dbase.a-t.com (Tom Rombouts)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: CLIPPER eclipses dBASE bugs: too many to mention!
Message-ID: <1991Apr29.170439.10591@dbase.a-t.com>
Date: 29 Apr 91 17:04:39 GMT
References: <16244.2816c071@levels.sait.edu.au>
Reply-To: tomr@dbase.UUCP (Tom Rombouts)
Organization: Ashton-Tate
Lines: 56

In article <16244.2816c071@levels.sait.edu.au> marwk@levels.sait.edu.au writes:
>I have seen a listing of bugs taking up about 1/2" thick of paper.
>
>This is too many to post to the net, so I'll compile a new list once
>5.01 fix disks reach me, and we can all eagerly find out which ones are
>really fixed and which new ones they have introduced.
>
>I like CLIPPER, but hell, didn't they actually try it out before boxing it?
>
>What happenned to their beta testers?  Quality control?
>Too much pay and not enough workers?
>Too any chiefs and not enough indians?
>Or perhaps the indians think they are chiefs?

  [ rest of post deleted ]

IMHO, unless you are writing shareware-type programs as a form of
hobby from your garage, there can come a time when you have to ship
something, _anything_, just to keep the payroll met and the doors
open.  One can hardly say Clipper 5.0 was rushed to the market, the
date and time stamps on the original 5.0 disks are exactly one year
later than the ship date predicted by a highly visible Nantucket
executive the year before.  (This was a minor joke - the punch line
being that if people complained that it was late, one could say that
the predicted ship date involved an "off by one" error.)  

Let's face it - dBASE IV 1.0 hurt Ashton-Tate greatly by being
released in a less-than-perfect condition.  On the other hand,
the amount of changes involved from III+ to IV represented one or
two quantum leaps in complexity from any revision of any dBASE or
dBASE-like product that had been done before.  As we approach the
ten year anniversary of the IBM PC this August, the micro software
history is littered with many products that were hyped or touted
by marketing types that were disappointments when they were 
released.  (Who remembers the $10 million dollar promotion of
DayFlo?....)  In fact, for those who complain about the primitive
combination of the IBM PC architecture and MS-DOS, this, too, can
be viewed as an after effect of something being rushed to the 
market.

For those reading this outside the realm of commercial software
development, the software buisness involves tradeoffs and monetarily
based decisions just like any other.  Also, in a volatle industry
such as ours, many smaller firms sometimes feel forced to make
louder claims to avoid being drowned out by the bigger entities.
I'm not saying any of this is "right", or trying to endorse some
form of "Software will always have bugs - c'est la vie!" attitude.
To the contrary, every developer I know hates glitches in their
work and tries as hard as they can to eliminate them.

But, this has gotten away from comp.databases, perhaps.  Also, it
is my own opinion and does not represent any views of any known
corporate entity.  I now step back and let the product wars continue.


Tom Rombouts  Torrance 'Tater  tomr@ashtate.A-T.com