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Seriously. Before I made it to the part where they agreed to stop auto-updating, I was on the third revision/toning-down of the comment I was writing in my head

Seriously. Before I made it to the part where they agreed to stop auto-updating, I was on the third revision/toning-down of the comment I was writing in my head. I get that having multiple versions in the wild makes support more difficult, but what's more important in a dev tool: your support workload, or your users' control over their configuration management?

kelnos 6y ago
As someone who maintains an open source development tool that I work on in my spare time and don't get paid for, reducing my support workload is absolutely more important to me. You'd be surprised at the amount of time I waste asking people to try to reproduce an issue on the latest version, and when they do, their issue goes away. Unfortunately an auto-update feature for my tool isn't feasible, but if it were, I'd add it in a heartbeat. If that would turn some people off on it, I'm fine with that. On a side note, I see plenty of developers click the "Remind Me Later" button over and over and over on the update dialog for their dev tools (and even OS). As a pathological example, I noticed one of my coworkers running a 3-year-old version of IntelliJ IDEA recently when he shared his screen on a Zoom call. But people who don't even install patch updates for months is common as well.
- utborin 6y ago
  That's fine for something a person is working on in their spare time, but when it's a multi-million dollar company whose mission statement is "we simplify the lives of developers who are making world-changing apps," I think it's fair to have different expectations.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > As someone who maintains an open source development tool that I work on in my spare time and don't get paid for, reducing my support workload is absolutely more important to me. Docker Desktop is produced by a for-profit company, and while it is free of charge itself, it is a key customer-facing part of an ecosystem Docker monetizes by selling subscriptions to services which it leverages. It's not some solo developer’s spare time project, and if Docker wants to be a viable business, it won't be treated like one.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  > On a side note, I see plenty of developers click the "Remind Me Later" button over and over and over on the update dialog for their dev tools (and even OS). It's not like the developers of some OS-es didn't work hard for users to have this attitude. Nowadays you better wait at least a few days before you give in and agree to update your system, it's just a sane approach to risk control.

kelnos 6y ago

As someone who maintains an open source development tool that I work on in my spare time and don't get paid for, reducing my support workload is absolutely more important to me. You'd be surprised at the amount of time I waste asking people to try to reproduce an issue on the latest version, and when they do, their issue goes away. Unfortunately an auto-update feature for my tool isn't feasible, but if it were, I'd add it in a heartbeat. If that would turn some people off on it, I'm fine with that. On a side note, I see plenty of developers click the "Remind Me Later" button over and over and over on the update dialog for their dev tools (and even OS). As a pathological example, I noticed one of my coworkers running a 3-year-old version of IntelliJ IDEA recently when he shared his screen on a Zoom call. But people who don't even install patch updates for months is common as well.

utborin 6y ago
That's fine for something a person is working on in their spare time, but when it's a multi-million dollar company whose mission statement is "we simplify the lives of developers who are making world-changing apps," I think it's fair to have different expectations.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> As someone who maintains an open source development tool that I work on in my spare time and don't get paid for, reducing my support workload is absolutely more important to me. Docker Desktop is produced by a for-profit company, and while it is free of charge itself, it is a key customer-facing part of an ecosystem Docker monetizes by selling subscriptions to services which it leverages. It's not some solo developer’s spare time project, and if Docker wants to be a viable business, it won't be treated like one.
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
> On a side note, I see plenty of developers click the "Remind Me Later" button over and over and over on the update dialog for their dev tools (and even OS). It's not like the developers of some OS-es didn't work hard for users to have this attitude. Nowadays you better wait at least a few days before you give in and agree to update your system, it's just a sane approach to risk control.