Are people scared of 1.0?
Google’s Moto: “If its always in beta, people can’t complain if its broken.”
I was just talking about the Greasemonkey Compiler, and while viewing that I noticed something that has been bugging me for some time now.
On the Compiler page, it asked the user to input a “version number” of their soon to be created extension. The label for that text box is “Something like “0.1″ works well here.” Does that bother anyone else? Ok, maybe not everyone gets bothered by a random guess at a version number on a random website, but to me, this is common symptom of a sickness that the whole computer world, and in particular, the web, is suffering from.
Someone makes a software product, it might suck, it might be great, that really doesn’t matter. They work on it, get a working version together and then release it to the public. what version do you think that should be? To me, and the general definition, that would be version “1.0″. Thats right, “1.0″. I know some of you might be confused because noone seems to use that anymore. Everyone seems to like to release a public build of whatever they are working on at version “0.1″, “0.2.3″, or the ever popular beta (Hello GMail! In beta for over a year now!). What is that?! Maybe its time to let some of the slow folks out there on how the software timeline should work.
1. You have started working on an idea. [ This would be where you 0.1s and 0.1.4s come in. ]
2. Then you got it basically working, and tested it yourself. [ This might be more 0.4-0.5...also called an alpha build ]
3. You work on it more, and then you ask your buddies to test it out for you and see if they find any bugs you didn’t. [ This, Google, is your beta builds! 0.6-0.9s ]
4. Finally you like what you see. It might not be perfect, it might not have all the features you want, but its good enough to release to the public. [ Welcome to version 1.0! ]
Ok, did we all learn something? Good! Now, granted that is a very basic timeline for software development, and you could add in a “bigger beta” stage before hitting 1.0. However, if you release your product, or site to the public, or even 85% of the public, (theres a GMail reference again) then its not beta. Its a 1.0. Please, don’t be afraid of the 1.0, its not scary…its a good thing!