Benoît Marchal - 23 November 2008 01:58 PM

Have you considered the alternative scenario?

Of course we have, numerous times. Note that we’ve continued to add functionality to EE gradually during 2.0’s development. As Jones stated 1.x has continued development so its not like we’ve ignored the community while 2.0 is inprogress. We’ve introduced numerous features and updates to the 1.x branch (that will also, therefore, be in 2.0). There isn’t a stand still or a lack of output from us.

Its the balance we’ve had to maintain while developing 2.0. To date 1.x is a strong product being adopted at all levels (like Change.gov and Ideo.com for example), sales have increased (not declined). Obviously 2.0 is taking longer than we would like but we feel our approach is the best solution. But we’re not bull headed either so if the situation changes or a better approach presents itself, we’ll certainly take it.

Also, just FYI, we’ve publicly stated that ecommerce is not launching with 2.0.

I think personally that the way it is being undertaken is the best. I don’t think that ExpressionEngine loses any competitiveness at all doing it this way as the development team are still keeping the 1.6.x branch up to date and in my mind 1.6.x as it stands now still kicks the pants off anything else out there. If it doesn’t do it out of the box (which isn’t a lot) then with a little bit of programming such as a plugin or extension you can usually get the system to do whatever you need.

I think (although I’m not a great programmer or anything) that gradually re-writing a whole code-base would be a lot lot harder to keep up with and probably more likely to be open to mistakes and errors.

The thing we have to understand is that they (the dev crew) have made their decision and it is their decision being their company and we just have to live with it whether we want to or not. Companies do make calls sometimes which don’t go down well with customers and even sometimes go wrong but history shows that everything ever done with ExpressionEngine has always always been good so I’m happy

Just my two pennies worth though.

Best wishes,

Mark

I think (although I’m not a great programmer or anything) that gradually re-writing a whole code-base would be a lot lot harder to keep up with and probably more likely to be open to mistakes and errors.

Maybe not “more” open to mistakes and errors, but it does indeed encourage sloppiness.  “It works” is a very bad habit to form in programming, and it’s easy to hack things together so that they function without making real improvements.  Not to mention that it would make life difficult and frustrating for third parties, as the APIs and application code would be a never-ending moving target from one point release to the next.

Put in much better terms than I could make above

I’m just impatient and hungry for more news.

Keep up the good work team

Mark Bowen - 23 November 2008 02:14 PM

I think (although I’m not a great programmer or anything) that gradually re-writing a whole code-base would be a lot lot harder to keep up with and probably more likely to be open to mistakes and errors.

My goal is raising the question was not to influence the development but to get re-assured that all the options had been considered so I’m happy with the answer. The following is not an attempt to influence the discussion, just to share experience.

I have worked mostly as a consultant for large organisations (e.g. IBM, EU Commission, Orange). In that environment one work always is in the middle of some sort of technical migration and my experience is that one almost always overestimate the costs and difficulty of a gradual migration and underestimate the cost and length of a big bang. I can think of very few exceptions to that rule.

Derek linked to an article describing just that choice between a rewrite from scratch and refactoring existing code. (and that article is linking to another good article on this subject by Joel Spolsky).

From the little bit of programming i know, i guess an inbetween version (gradual migration) is not at all an easy option for EE. CodeIgniter’s approach to Model-View-Control (MVC) probably doesn’t allow for just partially (or even easily) sliding EE into the CI framework or environment. CI however does make the base-layer very robust and therefore allows for a tall, maintainable building on top of that…

It’s not like re-arranging the deckchairs on ..^h^h (oops, wrong reference : )

Hey guys,

Not pushing but any update here? Just want to have a better idea if you think it will be 1-3 months, 3-6 months, or longer. It’s hard checking the site each day for an update…and actually physiologically proven that if people know how long to wait, they stay content for much longer.

Hope the coding is heating up as it gets colder and colder outside.

It’s hard checking the site each day for an update…

just get the rss-feed into your feedreader. that makes the act of checking easier (but not the wait :-( )

I recall the last ‘official’ time-frame was fall of 2008? It would (will) be appropriate to hear an update before/on Dec. 21 - not necessarily before, even if the update then proves to be “delivery at an undetermined date’. No announcement with a time frame would be alarming, though, for those old enough to recall the infamous commerce module.

The EE team might now use the galactic number ‘42’ (the wise will understand) and incorporate it into some sort of (random) completion formula - it might actually help (he said, remembering an IBM dude who really did use that number in every project estimate during the 1980s with some intriguing ‘research’ results). Then again, perhaps they have long been using 42 ...

Thankfully, since EE was ten years ahead of the competition as of Sept 21, 2008, taking things all-in-all, I reckon it is now nine years and nine months ahead, or maybe nine years and seven or eight months. Or ... so no rush.

just to add this thought:

i myself will definitely NOT use ee 2.0 immediately after the release. i will wait, let’s say, 2, 3, 4 months, until i relaunch my site with 2.0, ‘cause in the 1st phase there probably will be some bugs or other difficulties.

that means for me: i will have to wait anyway - if it’s released tomorrow or in 3 months. this keeps the tears away from my eyes.

http://expressionengine.com/blog/entry/first_impressions/ is exactly what I was talking about. And I, and many other definitely appreciate that first sentence “For December we are planning on two ExpressionEngine 2.0 updates. The first is this very post. The second will be around Dec. 19, give or take a couple days.”

Looking forward tot he 19th!

Since v1.x is a living, breathing version with new updates coming out, it seems to me much better to ignore v2 as much as possible unless involved in its development.

After the ecommerce almost-release some three years ago I learned to obey EllisLab’s injunction to plan against what actually exists, not what’s in the pipeline, and I’m a happier camper as a result.