Pharmaceutical testing

Some time ago, while creating a virtualized SharePoint development environment, I was looking for service packs, patches and so on, and I found the announcement of the new version of SharePoint product: Silverlight 3.

My first thought was "No, not again! Enough pain, enough dizziness!".

I get explained: in my company, we encorage our technical staff to use, introduce and promote new (stable) versions of the technologies on our projects and developments are based, assuming the risks and problems derived of it.

Usually, once the risks are mitigated (learning curve of the new tech, bug fixes or workarounds, etc.), in the projects which we use this practice, it results into a team experienced in a new technology and ready to be more productive in a new project based on the same technology. The benefit is a competitive advantage for my company.

The thing goes, more or less, this way: The team is initially excited for self-teaching and using brand-new version of the technology, feeling like pioneers taking their own piece of new land to live on and grow it up. Sooner or later (better the first), the team realizes that the new version may require a different approach, what means to throw away an important amount of working hours.

But the project plan and timming doesn't usually matters about new version experiments, so it finally derives in a little anxiety and overwork to finish the project on time (or not too late). This is mostly good for the team itself and for each individual in it, because makes the team and individual members grow in skill and experience.

But the last times, the excitation and anxiety have turned into anger and frustration. New versions or brand new technologies are stable, or bug-free no more. I am not talking about betas, RCs or RTMs. I mean FINAL versions.

Seems that the main IT corporations, those ones that rules our professional destinies and decide our customers needs, have to review their versioning and product launching policies.

They launch pseudo-finished techonologies and products, moved (it's my suppose) by competitive and marketing reasons.

If the new technology or product is satisfactory in the "commercial way of life", it is promoted, revised, service packed and so on until a REAL final version is launched. Otherwise it is discarded, refactored or re-versioned as fast as possible to cover the commercial objectives.

I suffered it all on LINQ to SQL, and later... no, sorry... at the same time, on Silverlight 2.0. With these technologies I felt like a kind of laboratory rat, those with the pharmaceuticals test their "medecines" on... no googled info, no workarounds, no one has... Just the pain and secondary effects on your being...

Now, a new medicine is launched: Silverlight 3.0; hope the leaflet specifies the contraindications and secondary effects that my team suffered with the 2.0 version. The final product is on the shelves of your nearest drugstore...

The case of LINQ to SQL is different... It will be retired from the market: seems like it have not enough contraindications or secondary effects... Better remove the active components that make it effective, and add more addictive and cancirnogen ones. And finally, launch it under a new brand name: Entity Framework...

Just kind a feeling: last times I felt like a guinea pig...

Regards