When starting the next version of a project there are 2 ways to proceed; you can modify and extend your existing application or you can big bang it. For the greatest continuity (confidence and reliability) the only real choice is to extend your existing application.
To big bang a project is to acknowledge it’s demise even before it’s started. There have been big bang successes in the past but they are greatly out numbered by those successes which have developed one step at a time. After all, why do you think it’s called development?(not original with me see http://www.paulgraham.com/ and http://www.joelonsoftware.com/)
But why do it? Developers have often been stereotyped as those people with the the most optimistic estimates for new work. This is often true, especially of entry level developers who may lack the real world experience to know that their estimates must be padded. At the same time even the most senior developer can become over confident, especially after a series of successes.
In general it comes down to an issue of pride (that greatest of sins). As developers we want to make the world in our image and this is our ‘big break’. The world must stand up and take notice! We are an awesome engineer and we can code circles around the next guy…. yeah right.
The reality is that we have not taken the time to understand the existing application and all it does. As a result we undervalue the existing work and we underestimate the time it will take to replace it. I blame mental laziness. Don’t let it happen to you.
- There is a steep learning curve for the shortcut keys. I used Insert-F5 a lot in order to find form fields but until I found this command in the help it was very hard to fill in any forms.
- It’s rather expensive. For a single user this seems to be an exorbitant price when I compare it to other speech synthesis products such as Text Aloud
