June 27, 2019 at 6:42 pm
Luis Cazares wrote:So, speaking of formatting tools, I just got a complaint because I formatted the code from the stored procedure that I worked on and that generated too many differences when comparing it to the old code. Apparently, some people prefer to keep unreadable ad performing code rather than having a continuous improvement. Sorry for venting. I just feel frustrated from working with one particular guy.
I've had this before, too. The way I solved it was by creating a centralised style in SQL Prompt and distributing it around the department. Then people are free to do their dev using their own particular style, but before checking in, they must reformat according to the centralised style. Ignoring whitespace when looking at differences can also help.
While working at Honeywell about nine years ago, an Oracle developer said he wanted all code checked into source control unformatted. Using tools like TOAD, each developer could create a macro to format the code as the preferred after checking it out, then unformat it prior to checking it back in. Not sure if that would really work, but apparently TOAD for Oracle has (had) a robust formatting capability. I never really used it as I tended to format my code by hand at the time any way.
June 27, 2019 at 6:59 pm
With the new SSC, everything is supposed to run through a dev/QA cycle before prod. We have PRs that require review before they get merged into a deployable spot.
Ummmm.... is that where the decisions to not include critical functionality or "not good enough but we have a schedule to meet" decisions are cast in stone?
I hope the supposed great improvements to SEO were worth it for RedGate... I do know for sure that the SSC migration cost RedGate 3 sales.
--Jeff Moden
June 27, 2019 at 7:18 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:With the new SSC, everything is supposed to run through a dev/QA cycle before prod. We have PRs that require review before they get merged into a deployable spot.
Ummmm.... is that where the decisions to not include critical functionality or "not good enough but we have a schedule to meet" decisions are cast in stone? I hope the supposed great improvements to SEO were worth it for RedGate... I do know for sure that the SSC migration cost RedGate 3 sales.
Does my company purchasing Redgate Toolbelt make up for one of those three? We just purchased it and after a couple of days working with Customer Support I have installed all the components of the Toolbelt. Two of them wouldn't install as the installation couldn't find the msi files for the older versions that had been installed as part of the Toolbelt Essentials we had purchased two years ago.
June 27, 2019 at 10:28 pm
Ummmm.... is that where the decisions to not include critical functionality or "not good enough but we have a schedule to meet" decisions are cast in stone? I hope the supposed great improvements to SEO were worth it for RedGate... I do know for sure that the SSC migration cost RedGate 3 sales.
Beyond worth it.
I think some of what you complain about is justified. Running through a set of tests doesn't mean we had code that worked well enough or was completely tested. There's a whole lesson to be learned about testing from different points of view on a complex site. We didn't do enough of that.
Some of your complaints, and others, are based on preference. There's no right or wrong there, or improvement /step back measurement. It's highly dependent on your view or preference.
3 sales isnt' much. That being said, we'd love to know how/why/what if you want to drop a note to sales@red-gate.com. We review and appreciate negative feedback. It helps us improve in the future.
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June 27, 2019 at 11:18 pm
Jeff Moden wrote:Ummmm.... is that where the decisions to not include critical functionality or "not good enough but we have a schedule to meet" decisions are cast in stone? I hope the supposed great improvements to SEO were worth it for RedGate... I do know for sure that the SSC migration cost RedGate 3 sales.
Beyond worth it. I think some of what you complain about is justified. Running through a set of tests doesn't mean we had code that worked well enough or was completely tested. There's a whole lesson to be learned about testing from different points of view on a complex site. We didn't do enough of that. Some of your complaints, and others, are based on preference. There's no right or wrong there, or improvement /step back measurement. It's highly dependent on your view or preference. 3 sales isnt' much. That being said, we'd love to know how/why/what if you want to drop a note to sales@red-gate.com. We review and appreciate negative feedback. It helps us improve in the future.
Most of my "complaints" weren't based on personal preference at all. Things like not having links on search engines work seemed really important to me and those did take a huge hit. That seemed totally contrary to your goal of increasing SEO.
So you say all of this was "totally worth it"... What has it actually done for either SSC or RedGate? Those of us that tested and noted all of the things that were wrong both before and after the release are curious, of course.
As for the sales it cost... 3 that you now know about might not be much but how many do you NOT know about? And the reason is just plain stupid (you already know the reason) and could have been totally avoided if your "management team" was a little more patient.
--Jeff Moden
June 28, 2019 at 2:26 am
What a day, one could not make it up! My best friend taken to a hospital (second time in two days) after collapsing going flat on the ground, no family around, the missus telling me that she had to travel this morning (2000 miles and already there), my kids going through exams and the main vendor of the integration framework technology I've been working on for the passed year has suddenly lost interest, On top of this, the client has decided to move the main operation to the outskirt of civilization up north in the UK. 😎 Feeling a bit overwhelmed, not complaining as I know many have bigger problems, but...
Wow. I played golf. It was rough.
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June 28, 2019 at 2:52 am
Eirikur Eiriksson wrote:What a day, one could not make it up! My best friend taken to a hospital (second time in two days) after collapsing going flat on the ground, no family around, the missus telling me that she had to travel this morning (2000 miles and already there), my kids going through exams and the main vendor of the integration framework technology I've been working on for the passed year has suddenly lost interest, On top of this, the client has decided to move the main operation to the outskirt of civilization up north in the UK. 😎 Feeling a bit overwhelmed, not complaining as I know many have bigger problems, but...
Wow. I played golf. It was rough.
That's a fair way of stating that. 😉 Heh... did you have to join a club to play? 😀 And, yeah... I'll get these bad jokes ironed out soon. 😀 😀
--Jeff Moden
June 28, 2019 at 11:30 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor wrote:Jeff Moden wrote:Ummmm.... is that where the decisions to not include critical functionality or "not good enough but we have a schedule to meet" decisions are cast in stone? I hope the supposed great improvements to SEO were worth it for RedGate... I do know for sure that the SSC migration cost RedGate 3 sales.
Beyond worth it. I think some of what you complain about is justified. Running through a set of tests doesn't mean we had code that worked well enough or was completely tested. There's a whole lesson to be learned about testing from different points of view on a complex site. We didn't do enough of that. Some of your complaints, and others, are based on preference. There's no right or wrong there, or improvement /step back measurement. It's highly dependent on your view or preference. 3 sales isnt' much. That being said, we'd love to know how/why/what if you want to drop a note to sales@red-gate.com. We review and appreciate negative feedback. It helps us improve in the future.
Most of my "complaints" weren't based on personal preference at all. Things like not having links on search engines work seemed really important to me and those did take a huge hit. That seemed totally contrary to your goal of increasing SEO. So you say all of this was "totally worth it"... What has it actually done for either SSC or RedGate? Those of us that tested and noted all of the things that were wrong both before and after the release are curious, of course. As for the sales it cost... 3 that you now know about might not be much but how many do you NOT know about? And the reason is just plain stupid (you already know the reason) and could have been totally avoided if your "management team" was a little more patient.
To add to this, what are you calling a "personal preference", Mr. Jones? If you take a look at the code in older posts such as HERE , you'll find some terribly spaced code (as you will on virtually any pre-migration post). Are you calling wanting that code to be spaced as it originally was a personal preference???
--Jeff Moden
July 1, 2019 at 1:46 pm
So, I don't want to argue through all this. We had a number of things, not just management, that pushed a release. Quite a few of the items wouldn't have been found because we weren't testing for them.
Search engines would have been broken somewhat as we didn't think the URL rewriting was as complex as it was. That's certainly on us, but has nothing to do with the timing. The search engine results have been increasing, whereas they were decreasing in the past.
Anything to do with code formatting, or site formatting, is personal preference.
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July 1, 2019 at 2:03 pm
So, I don't want to argue through all this. We had a number of things, not just management, that pushed a release. Quite a few of the items wouldn't have been found because we weren't testing for them. Search engines would have been broken somewhat as we didn't think the URL rewriting was as complex as it was. That's certainly on us, but has nothing to do with the timing. The search engine results have been increasing, whereas they were decreasing in the past. Anything to do with code formatting, or site formatting, is personal preference.
Gosh Steve. With all due respect, this isn't the response I'd have expected from you, or any other software professional.
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July 1, 2019 at 2:09 pm
... Anything to do with code formatting, or site formatting, is personal preference.
Really??? There is a reason we all don't use monochrome monitors anymore, they were visually unappealing.
I come to this site only a few times a day anymore. Mainly to see what others are complaining about. The new look is just that visually unappealing to me.
Jeff hits it out of the park again. Only to have the ref, call it strike three. 😉
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July 1, 2019 at 2:20 pm
I come to this site only a few times a day anymore. Mainly to see what others are complaining about. The new look is just that visually unappealing to me.
What's appealing in looks is quite opinionated; I'll admit I liked the old old style more, but I understand why that one went (and it would be especially dated and likely lacking in functionality if still used today). Personally, I don't mind the new layout now that I've gotten used to it. My biggest bug bares now is that user don't make use of the insert/edit code sample button, making their code awful to look at, and that the code samples don't have a vertical scroll bar, making wide code difficult to read and you have to scroll down to the horizontal scroll bar (or have a mouse with a side scroll wheel like i do at home).
But just ripping into the site isn't going to help anything change; we all know that constructive feedback is far better received. We've all experienced users that only see the "bad" things about the software they use, and never the good parts (like that actually, that 99.9% of the time the system functions, and that even if it's been down for 1 minute in the last year it's actually not a pile of sh....).
Thom~
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July 1, 2019 at 2:24 pm
Visually appealing is a personal preference. The people on this thread seem (to me and a few others) to be complaining as though the formatting is something that's right or wrong, black or white.
Quite a few people have complemented the new look. Many have preferred this to the old style. Many disagree as well. I'm not keeping score, but I've constantly listened to complaints over the years, as well as praise.
I'm not dismissing Jeff's complaints, or any of yours, but you 20 that post here often are important, but not the only ones that have opinions. Many, many people prefer the looks that you complain about.
@chris-2, what wouldn't you expect? I'm explaining a reality that many of us deal with and complain about regularly. We don't/didn't/likely won't test enough. At least not for a particular release. There often are both resource limits and knowledge limits. There were things we didn't think about because the team doing the work, myself included, didn't think some things through. Another month or six months likely wouldn't have changed that.
It's a somewhat embarrassing admission, but it's one I accept. I've thought a lot about things that went wrong. Some of them we'd have caught, but quite a few we wouldn't.
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July 1, 2019 at 3:45 pm
Visually appealing is a personal preference. The people on this thread seem (to me and a few others) to be complaining as though the formatting is something that's right or wrong, black or white. Quite a few people have complemented the new look. Many have preferred this to the old style. Many disagree as well. I'm not keeping score, but I've constantly listened to complaints over the years, as well as praise. I'm not dismissing Jeff's complaints, or any of yours, but you 20 that post here often are important, but not the only ones that have opinions. Many, many people prefer the looks that you complain about. @chris-2, what wouldn't you expect? I'm explaining a reality that many of us deal with and complain about regularly. We don't/didn't/likely won't test enough. At least not for a particular release. There often are both resource limits and knowledge limits. There were things we didn't think about because the team doing the work, myself included, didn't think some things through. Another month or six months likely wouldn't have changed that. It's a somewhat embarrassing admission, but it's one I accept. I've thought a lot about things that went wrong. Some of them we'd have caught, but quite a few we wouldn't.
WE caught many of the problems in the pretesting for you and you folks did almost NOTHING to fix them prior to the release. Would have delaying a month or two really have cost RedGate all that much? I don't believe that you understand the intangible costs of releasing it early and wrong have actually cost you folks especially since you sell software that's supposed to prevent such release problems.
Heh... enquiring minds want to know... can we see the rolling sales chart for the previous six months for the next six months so we can see how well the improved SEO paid off? 😉 It would actually make for a great case study that would prove that incomplete and broken releases actually do pay off it you hit the right functionality (SEO in this case).
Having said that, I'll back off on my opinion now. It's not like it's going to change anything. I'm just P/O'd that I wasted my time testing (yet again) and I did want to let you know that your management team might not be aware of some of the sales/reputation damage that may have occurred because of the manner in which this release was done.
--Jeff Moden
July 1, 2019 at 4:53 pm
I'll leave this here, as we're not going to agree.
I've apologized for the issues, and I do so again here: I'm sorry. We made mistakes and didn't do this that well, and learned things along the way.
We appreciated the testing, we took issues seriously and worked on them. I didn't see all the testing issues, but the items that I saw recorded were addressed in issues. Some were fixed, some were not, some regressed with other work. The number of issues at launch were vastly greater than anything we got from testers. We had actually very few people volunteer (and this was volunteer work, we know that) to test the beta site. I hope you all know that we did appreciate your efforts, which is why we sent a small token of thanks to a few of you.
Our sales have little to do with this site. This site is valuable, at least, I hope so, but it's a very small number of sales. However, it is a marketing engine, and that was dramatically tailing off with the old site. It has dramatically improved over the last few months as Google and Bing reindex the site. We rank higher now in many areas than we did for the last 5 years.
As I've mentioned before, the decision to release was based on a few things, one of which was my schedule. If we hadn't released then, we would still be holding and likely releasing this week or next. Actually, this Friday would probably have been the next date. However, I would not have had much time from May 1 to now, and I really don't know that many things would have improved. We made the decision to go slightly early rather than late.
In hindsight, while I do value your opinions and apologize for the hassles, I'm really not sure if we did the right thing or wrong thing. It's not clear to me, with lots of information from all sides.
This project took much longer than expected (about 7 months before release) and was expensive. I think it could have been managed better, and I wish I'd taken a more active role throughout, but that's not really my job. Rather, I'm hoping some learning and lessons come out for future development project management inside the company.
I hope you all still find the site and community worth supporting and continue to do so, but if not, I understand. I think we've made improvements that are moving us forward, and we continue to get resources to address some issues, though more in a time slice way now with other projects.
Again, I am sorry for the issues that have upset some of you.
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