Editorials

How Long Will It Last?

How Long Will It Last?
I was reading about capabilities of the new Visual Studio 2012 and came across a phrase in the description of LightSwitch that caught my attention. For those of you not familiar with LightSwitch, it is a 4GL code generator that builds apps. The resultant code is based on well established frameworks and patterns driven by your database design. The article says

"… it generates Silverlight applications which are last year’s thing. Microsoft is releasing an HTML code generator for LightSwitch which may revive interest…"

A few things stand out for me in this short phrase.

LightSwich hasn’t been out of beta for all that long, and it isn’t clear if LightSwitch will continue to be an ongoing effort.

Already SilverLight is on the fade…at least from Microsoft’s perspective if I’m reading this correctly. It hasn’t been out of beta for much more than a couple years.

This prompts me to ask myself the questions, what tools should I embrace? If it takes me a couple years to create software, and the products used to develop them become obsolete in that same period, what is the expected life of my software?

There is probably some great guidance on this. Let’s hear from you, our readers. How do you increase the shelf life or your software or purchased packages? Share your thoughts by writing to btaylor@sswug.org.

Cheers,

Ben

$$SWYNK$$

Featured Article(s)
How to Handle ‘Takers’
In the previous SSWUG TV interview with Stephen Wynkoop and Laura Lee Rose, we covered How to handle "Net Takers". This is a more detailed discussion on that topic.

Featured White Paper(s)
Top 10 Tips for Optimizing SQL Server Performance
read more)