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It costs you nothing to use phrases like "shoddy development". It costs Adobe many millions to port Photoshop to Cocoa.

by sielskr 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
potatolicious 17y ago
"It costs Adobe many millions to port Photoshop to Cocoa." Yet in the end it must be done, and the earlier you do it the cheaper it gets (both in terms of good/bad press and actual development cost). Instead of being proactive and investing in the port over several releases, they are now in the position of 11th-houring it after binary support for Carbon APIs have been removed. This isn't some idle, idealistic call for good code - deprecated API will lose binary support at some point, it's entirely on Adobe's head that this has gotten to this point at all. I've worked at companies similar to Adobe's model (e.g. professional tools, regular releases to keep the cash monies flowing), and the death march for "bullet-point-able" features is relentless. The constant mad scramble for new features to justify the release cycle, along with management's complete lack of willingness to invest in rudimentary code maintenance, results in a code base that simply becomes unwieldy over time. Obviously I do not work for Adobe, but it's most probable that their current Cocoa porting efforts will end up far more expensive than if they had start the effort much earlier, and it certainly would present a lot less frustration to their customers now.
- l0nwlf 17y ago
  I agree with you regarding the fact that Adobe should have done the transition sooner. They were way too reluctant and lazy to move away from Carbon. However this happens for almost all the major corps, 11-th houring and regular releases of meaningless newer versions to keep the cashbook ringing. 'Obviously I do not work for Adobe' Don't worry, I can imagine employees of Adobe getting a newer jobs of porting stuffs to cocoa, newer deadlines and stuff. Currently they would be more frustrated than the customers which is a potential problem in future. However they are paid for that frustration, isn't it ?
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    I'm more thinking that if they were more proactive, and less complacent in their position as a market leader, that they would be saving themselves a lot of money, bad press, and their engineers would be a lot less frustrated, a lot happier, and their customers wouldn't have to deal with all of this on the eve of a new OS release. Seems like a win for everyone, all you need to do is drill into the heads of upper management that regular code maintenance is an absolute must to the long-term health of your business. I don't think Adobe was lazy in terms of the Cocoa port. From what I can tell they thought they could pull a quick one on Apple like they constantly do to Microsoft - i.e. use their ginormous size and market influence to keep any deprecated API in binaries. It's a "we're too big for you to screw us" mentality, and I'm glad Apple stuck it to them. One of MS's most fundamental problems is that they can't remove API that's been deprecated for a decade for more - they won't just kill old software, they will kill lots of new releases also! Not to mention, unless Adobe has been on a hiring binge or loading up on temps (never a good idea), the next release of Photoshop will be light on new features and heavy on invisible elements like the Cocoa port. So they threw caution into the wind in favor of more shippable, sellable features, and now they're stuck on an entire release cycle without.

It costs you nothing to use phrases like "shoddy development". It costs Adobe many millions to port Photoshop to Cocoa.

by sielskr 17y ago

It costs you nothing to use phrases like "shoddy development". It costs Adobe many millions to port Photoshop to Cocoa.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

potatolicious 17y ago

"It costs Adobe many millions to port Photoshop to Cocoa." Yet in the end it must be done, and the earlier you do it the cheaper it gets (both in terms of good/bad press and actual development cost). Instead of being proactive and investing in the port over several releases, they are now in the position of 11th-houring it after binary support for Carbon APIs have been removed. This isn't some idle, idealistic call for good code - deprecated API will lose binary support at some point, it's entirely on Adobe's head that this has gotten to this point at all. I've worked at companies similar to Adobe's model (e.g. professional tools, regular releases to keep the cash monies flowing), and the death march for "bullet-point-able" features is relentless. The constant mad scramble for new features to justify the release cycle, along with management's complete lack of willingness to invest in rudimentary code maintenance, results in a code base that simply becomes unwieldy over time. Obviously I do not work for Adobe, but it's most probable that their current Cocoa porting efforts will end up far more expensive than if they had start the effort much earlier, and it certainly would present a lot less frustration to their customers now.

l0nwlf 17y ago
I agree with you regarding the fact that Adobe should have done the transition sooner. They were way too reluctant and lazy to move away from Carbon. However this happens for almost all the major corps, 11-th houring and regular releases of meaningless newer versions to keep the cashbook ringing. 'Obviously I do not work for Adobe' Don't worry, I can imagine employees of Adobe getting a newer jobs of porting stuffs to cocoa, newer deadlines and stuff. Currently they would be more frustrated than the customers which is a potential problem in future. However they are paid for that frustration, isn't it ?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I'm more thinking that if they were more proactive, and less complacent in their position as a market leader, that they would be saving themselves a lot of money, bad press, and their engineers would be a lot less frustrated, a lot happier, and their customers wouldn't have to deal with all of this on the eve of a new OS release. Seems like a win for everyone, all you need to do is drill into the heads of upper management that regular code maintenance is an absolute must to the long-term health of your business. I don't think Adobe was lazy in terms of the Cocoa port. From what I can tell they thought they could pull a quick one on Apple like they constantly do to Microsoft - i.e. use their ginormous size and market influence to keep any deprecated API in binaries. It's a "we're too big for you to screw us" mentality, and I'm glad Apple stuck it to them. One of MS's most fundamental problems is that they can't remove API that's been deprecated for a decade for more - they won't just kill old software, they will kill lots of new releases also! Not to mention, unless Adobe has been on a hiring binge or loading up on temps (never a good idea), the next release of Photoshop will be light on new features and heavy on invisible elements like the Cocoa port. So they threw caution into the wind in favor of more shippable, sellable features, and now they're stuck on an entire release cycle without.