4 ms·

I'm a bit behind the curve here - but now that I'm caught up, I'm concerned. When I saw the title of this article, I immediately logged into my Basecamp. Hmm,

I'm a bit behind the curve here - but now that I'm caught up, I'm concerned. When I saw the title of this article, I immediately logged into my Basecamp. Hmm, it looked the same. So I went and found their upgrade instructions. Then I learned that it's not a straight 1:1 upgrade, it's a different product. And they've dropped support for some quite important features, like, time-tracking. My work runs on Basecamp. We chose it for two reasons, first because it did (nearly) everything we needed it to do, second, because it was being developed by a company we loved. Now, it's completely integrated into our days to day production. We depend on it. If I walked in to work today and Basecamp was down, I might as well turn around and head home. We've let 37Signals premiere product become essential to us. As of today, we're using their formerly premiere product. And if we wanted to upgrade to their premiere product, we'd lose completely essential feature. Yes, they can say that Basecamp Classic will be the same great product it's always been, but it won't. Part of that greatness was innovation, and I don't think anyone believes that 37Signals will continue to innovate with a product that has "Classic" in its name. The solution isn't hard. 37Signals just needs to be clear. Will critical features like Time Tracking be in a future version of Basecamp, or will that requirement make us, forever, second class users? Because, I'd rather be a 1st class user at one of Basecamp's competitors than a 2nd class user at the service I've been using for the past 4 years.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dhh 15y ago
We're launching with a great set of features we could do in a reasonable amount of time. If we had tried to reimplement every single Basecamp Classic feature in Basecamp Next before we launched, it would have taken a very long time. Basecamp Classic originally launched without even file uploads! We'll be busy bees making Basecamp Next fill in gaps all over the place in the coming months. Looking into how we can solve people's time tracking needs with a great workflow in Basecamp Next is high on that list!
- palish 15y ago
  Why did you do a full rewrite?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - ch0wn 15y ago
    It's pretty much all explained in this blog post: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3112-how-basecamp-next-got-to-be-so-damn-fast-without-using-much-client-side-ui http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3112-how-basecamp-next-got-to... Quote: "[...] one of the key arguments for a rewrite was that we wanted a dramatic leap forward in speed — one that wouldn’t be possible through mere evolution."
- atourgates 15y ago
  That's great to hear - but why does it take a rant on HN to communicate that integrating Time Tracking with Basecamp Next is a high priority? If you're committing to adding Time-Tracking in the future, publicize it, so users like me will be confident that it's worth sticking with Basecamp. Until that happens, you're telling us, "Sorry, you're not our target user base."
  - dhh 15y ago
    We weren't happy with the time tracking integration in Classic. It was usable, but it wasn't great. We want to take our time to either come up with a better built-in solution or an integration with another tool or something else. This is a big part of why we're keeping Basecamp Classic around for a very long time. Basecamp Next was not going to launch with all the features that Classic already has. So it's OK that it's not a perfect fit for all existing customers on Day 1. The iPhone didn't have copy'n'paste for a while, either. There's just so much you can do for launch, if you want to ship.
    - jballanc 15y ago
      The iPhone anecdote is such an important one. Probably the most important lesson I learned working at Apple was: people don't remember that a feature was missing once you implement it, but they remember broken features long after you've fixed them.
Smrchy 15y ago
I agree 100%. Without time tracking Basecamp Next is useless to us too. Migrating Classic to Next and losing our tracked time is no option. We mainly use To-Do lists and time tracking. Time tracking as it only is available in the 49$/month price plan was the single reason we upgraded. I'm a bit disappointed now as i was looking forward to Basecamp Next.
bambax 15y ago
> it's completely integrated into our days to day production. We depend on it 37signals, and DHH, constantly warn anybody that will listen, that they should not use free products because that "makes them the product" and leaves them at the mercy of an acquisition, or failure, etc. But your comment shows that one can face the same risks with every Saas... Boxed software wasn't all bad! ;-) and open source software that you host yourself isn't bad either!
- batista 15y ago
  Hmm, I'm thinking of a third model, where you have SaaS, but you get a custom install for you (or your company), that you get to decide when and if to update. Something between boxed software and a one-for-all SaaS.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dhh 15y ago

We're launching with a great set of features we could do in a reasonable amount of time. If we had tried to reimplement every single Basecamp Classic feature in Basecamp Next before we launched, it would have taken a very long time. Basecamp Classic originally launched without even file uploads! We'll be busy bees making Basecamp Next fill in gaps all over the place in the coming months. Looking into how we can solve people's time tracking needs with a great workflow in Basecamp Next is high on that list!

palish 15y ago
Why did you do a full rewrite?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ch0wn 15y ago
  It's pretty much all explained in this blog post: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3112-how-basecamp-next-got-to-be-so-damn-fast-without-using-much-client-side-ui http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3112-how-basecamp-next-got-to... Quote: "[...] one of the key arguments for a rewrite was that we wanted a dramatic leap forward in speed — one that wouldn’t be possible through mere evolution."
atourgates 15y ago
That's great to hear - but why does it take a rant on HN to communicate that integrating Time Tracking with Basecamp Next is a high priority? If you're committing to adding Time-Tracking in the future, publicize it, so users like me will be confident that it's worth sticking with Basecamp. Until that happens, you're telling us, "Sorry, you're not our target user base."
- dhh 15y ago
  We weren't happy with the time tracking integration in Classic. It was usable, but it wasn't great. We want to take our time to either come up with a better built-in solution or an integration with another tool or something else. This is a big part of why we're keeping Basecamp Classic around for a very long time. Basecamp Next was not going to launch with all the features that Classic already has. So it's OK that it's not a perfect fit for all existing customers on Day 1. The iPhone didn't have copy'n'paste for a while, either. There's just so much you can do for launch, if you want to ship.
  - jballanc 15y ago
    The iPhone anecdote is such an important one. Probably the most important lesson I learned working at Apple was: people don't remember that a feature was missing once you implement it, but they remember broken features long after you've fixed them.

Smrchy 15y ago

I agree 100%. Without time tracking Basecamp Next is useless to us too. Migrating Classic to Next and losing our tracked time is no option. We mainly use To-Do lists and time tracking. Time tracking as it only is available in the 49$/month price plan was the single reason we upgraded. I'm a bit disappointed now as i was looking forward to Basecamp Next.

bambax 15y ago

> it's completely integrated into our days to day production. We depend on it 37signals, and DHH, constantly warn anybody that will listen, that they should not use free products because that "makes them the product" and leaves them at the mercy of an acquisition, or failure, etc. But your comment shows that one can face the same risks with every Saas... Boxed software wasn't all bad! ;-) and open source software that you host yourself isn't bad either!

batista 15y ago
Hmm, I'm thinking of a third model, where you have SaaS, but you get a custom install for you (or your company), that you get to decide when and if to update. Something between boxed software and a one-for-all SaaS.