The slowdown of development

I have been on the tejpWriter beta list for ages, and recently began using the program for reviewing as it is extremely fast and consumes little ‘cpu cycles’. Up to the version 3, many things were added in rapid succession-one feature hunted the next at a breath-taking speed. But recently, the developer emailed me about how he was sorry for the slow rate of feature growth in version 3. Duh!

At the fist sight, this indeed is true. Each new version must have loads and loads of new features, isn’t that how Microsoft et al show us? To be honest, a program is more than the number of its features!

When development begins, the program needs to be transformed into a working condition. The first version is released, and customers request al kinds of features. Those features are built, version 2 is shipped.

But after a few cycles, the process will slow down. The demand for new features will stop, as the program does all that customers expect(and probably a lot more). Now, you can obviously keep on bloating the program with extra features that nobody quite needs-but is this what customers really wish for?

For example, tejpWriter would not benefit from syntax highlighting, etc imho. The program would get fatter and slower, and this slowdown would eventually eliminate the main reason tejpWriter is so popular.

So, when adding a feature next time, please think about if your users will really benefit from it. Each and every app eventually enters ‘maintenance mode’-so see the signs of time and act on them.

How do you feel about this?

Related posts:

1. On continuing development with open bugs
2. tejpWriter 3.02 released
3. tejpWriter 3.42 released
4. tejpWriter 3.01 released
5. tejpWriter 3.42 Beta 4 released