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consume as little memory/CPU as fast as possible as bug-free as possible...
anyway, for really fast/stable editing I use UltraEdit, for simple things.
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MonoDevelop is not stable as an Integrated Development
Environment nor productive. One could think that
because of the languages you can program using it such
as C# it should be productive, but a proficient C++/MFC
programmer can be much more productive using
Visual Studio 6.0, that depends on you.
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*silence*
Ok, now that I have your attention, I think stability is more important. A classic case is Windows Me. It had quite a few features compared to Win 9x: System Restore (the one that I found most useful *at that time*), WFP, Windows Image Acquisition, and some other things. But the poor (buggy?) hardware support was its downfall. There was a period when I got 2-3 BSODs in a day. Personally I stuck with it since I didn't want to go for 98 and waited for Win Xp, but I'm just a fringe element. If I found myself in the same situation today, I might 'downgrade' my OS.
That said, the question isn't about apps that never crash but force you to do banal tasks multiple times and next-gen apps that would finish your day's work in 4 hours - provided they don't crash every hour. If it were, I suspect the right answer would be 'somewhere inbetween'.
It's a question about tradeoffs, and I think stability is more important.
My 2 paise.
Cheers,
Vikram. "When I read in books about a "base class", I figured this was the class that was at the bottom of the inheritence tree. It's the "base", right? Like the base of a pyramid." - Marc Clifton.
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I don't think its fair to compare stability with being more productive. A program can be very productive, and its just wrong to release a product if you know its not stable.
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Stability cannot be taken for granted. First your development team need to be given the resource to do it in a reasonable time frame with reasonable budget. The company making the software need to be able to operate at reasonable margin.
Norman Fung
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I prefer rock-solid, simply because I don't want (or deserve) the irritation, aggravation, frustration and sense of defeat I get from a buggy version that maybe re-formats things, changes print appearance, loses files, refuses to impo rt things-or whatever it is that I must do.
Boogums - the thing in the dark
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boogums wrote: re-formats things
Kinda sounds like JDeveloper. Occasionally it decided to remove sections of code that you explicitly put in. I guess it wanted to do all the programming so it decided to scold me from time to time for pretending I was a programmer. I quickly learned not to do that again (Program with Oracle tools that is).
I still debate whether that was a feature or a bug.
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Before presumption, surely you must be in a position to quantify both the advantages and disadvantages of both forms. If the time is used to make a profit or complete a contract (at the very least on time) you must quantify time lost by an app that sporadically crashes otherwise you run a risk of failure. If you signed up to a fixed term contract on the pretext that you were to use stable software then you have a much better chance of success. During that time if you can quantify time saved by use of a buggy app you could gain. The problem with buggy software is to be able to accurately determine overall productivity as a relative/quantifiable comparison before you start using it as part of your process. However the last thing you need is to discover that you have damaged your OS or even your hard disk file structures due to an unprecedented memory leak...
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Cant agree more. I mean, if your development budget (and your profit margin) is big enuf, sure. If not, think of it this way: Did your client pay for the quality and features?
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If it takes less time to complete the job using the buggy tool, I'll use it.
Certainly every development environment has more bugs than Notepad, yet no-one uses Notepad for stability reasons (some do because they fear IDEs).
However if working around problems and restarting after crashes takes more time than the new features saved, I'm more productive with the stable software.
For the software I'm writing, I always try to get it stable first because "Fixing bugs+Implementing features" is simpler and faster than "Implementing features+Fixing bugs" (every bugfix is a breaking change and can cause new problems in the other features)
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That is why I choose SharpDevelop. From my experience, it seems to be stable, and allows you to work fast.
Pumk1nh3ad illustrates that Intelligent Design oft goes awry. - Ed Gadziemski
You did'nt get it. I over estimated you. - Josh Gray
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I too like a little bit of both. But I use VS2005 since a couple of months (since beta 1 actually). Its stable and I love the way it lets me develop my software.
WM.
What about weapons of mass-construction?
-- modified at 12:08 Wednesday 23rd November, 2005
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The poll is first asking: "I prefer a product that allows me to work faster"
but then the voting option assumes that the buggy piece of software with more producttivity enhancements will allow someone to work faster, and that the stable piece of software will be slower to work with. These options dont aswer the initial question, since I feel a stable piece of software will generally allow me to work faster.
Troy
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I'm with you on this one Troy. I thought the same thing. I can't count the times I've had a buggy app GPF on me right after I fixed one of the worlds problems. In fact, just had one the other day where it barfed on me as I attempted to save my work. A buggy piece of software saving time? I think not.
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What a dumb quesion.
A program that is not stable does not allow me to work faster!
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is not always true
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Agreed, what use is an app that crashes every hour?
Besides, I usually find those so called "productivity" features are just gimicks that look cool at first, but you soon release are actaully getting in the way and you end up just switching them off. Better to concentrate effort on the key features of your product and usability
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Jim A. Johnson wrote: A program that is not stable does not allow me to work faster!
Not true at all.
Let's say a program has some features that cut your work time by 20%, but due to crashes you spend 10% of your time restarting and recovering. You're still ahead.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Unfortunately for me, the time spent subduing my frustration, or in daydreaming about having the development team against a wall with an automatic weapon in my hands, reduces my productivity far more than just the time spent recovering from crashes.
Software Zen: delete this;
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So take a xanax and get on with life.
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Paul Brower wrote: So take a xanax and get on with life.
Actually, I "take a xanax 6 mile run and get on with life".
Software Zen: delete this;
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I've tried many productivity tools that may be stable but are useless to me because they don't fit into my workflow. I can't imagine not having intellisense even though it doesn't always work.
Same goes for tools like make. Reliable, predictable and a royal pain to use.
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Until it decides to open as Wordpad instead !
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Ever heard term, "rule of thumb?" It is often claimed that the term originally referred to the maximum size of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb
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