Three releases and rewrite?

Three releases and rewrite?

[Scott McCoy]

General question:  In the recent past, as my group has gotten more and
more away from pure DoD development and more into non-government work,
I've noticed something:

    It seems like a rule of thumb for commercial software applications
    is that after three major releases (i.e., 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), you
    rewrite the application from scratch.

Now, I understand that technology constantly changes (new languages,
utilities, architectures, etc.), so a rewrite after three releases
would be sensible in order to keep competitive.

Is this a reasonable rule of thumb?

(I thought this relevant to the Ada folks, since we often get
requirements that systems must be operational for 20 years, so we
don't get the opportunity to do a re-write every few years.)

-- 
Scott McCoy     Opinions expressed are my own.
 
ON HUMILITY
To err is human, to moo bovine.

Re: Three releases and rewrite?

[Dr. Richard Botting]

Scott McCoy (smccoy@hisd.harris.com) wrote:
: General question:  In the recent past, as my group has gotten more and
: more away from pure DoD development and more into non-government work,
: I've noticed something:

:     It seems like a rule of thumb for commercial software applications
:     is that after three major releases (i.e., 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), you
:     rewrite the application from scratch.
[...]

: Is this a reasonable rule of thumb?
This may be rather like Brookes's observations.
My own rule is to never buy an even numbered release.

: ON HUMILITY
: To err is human, to moo bovine.
To err is human, but to really foul things up, make it into a law or program.

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Re: Three releases and rewrite?

[Robert Dewar]

":     It seems like a rule of thumb for commercial software applications
:     is that after three major releases (i.e., 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), you
:     rewrite the application from scratch."

I can't think of many examples. In the case of OS/2, it was after one
major release that it was rewritten. Word Perfect is on version 6 without
a major rewrite. Lots of other products are beyond three major products.

So, an interesting hypothesis, but a dearth of supporting data. Yes of
course we know about Windows, but one example doth not a rule make!

Re: Three releases and rewrite?

[Scott McCoy]

In article <dewar.840287749@schonberg>, dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
|> ":     It seems like a rule of thumb for commercial software applications
|> :     is that after three major releases (i.e., 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), you
|> :     rewrite the application from scratch."
|> 
|> I can't think of many examples. In the case of OS/2, it was after one
|> major release that it was rewritten. Word Perfect is on version 6 without
|> a major rewrite. Lots of other products are beyond three major products.
|> 
|> So, an interesting hypothesis, but a dearth of supporting data. Yes of
|> course we know about Windows, but one example doth not a rule make!
|> 

Examples?  Mosaic, Word for Windows (and some other MS Office applications).

And, I was just looking for a rule of thumb, not a software law! ;-)

-- 
Scott McCoy     Opinions expressed are my own.
 
...Naked in the periwinkle.