[ic] "Interchange 6"? Really?

Paul Jordan paul at gishnetwork.com
Thu Sep 29 00:38:54 UTC 2011


>>> I think David feels like your throwing away *his* knowhow, and the time
>>> and money he has put towards ideas and concepts in the tech he built 
>>> around
>>> IC.
>>
>> Nobody can throw away his skills. They may slowly atrophy if they are 
>> only
>> useful on older technologies. We all have to keep up with change.
>
> I've been pondering lately whether to continue forward with IC or
> rewrite my store in something different. IC works and as Jon pointed
> out, "you host your own software based on open source on your own
> server" so there's no reason I can't continue to do so with everything
> as-is. If I'm not satisfied with that and I want to stay on the
> cutting edge, I have 3 options from what I can figure:
>
> 1. rewrite completely custom from the ground up
>
> Compared to utilizing a framework, this provides more flexibility but
> requires massively more ongoing development effort to achieve the same
> result.

I actually welcome rewrites. My main issue was that instead of a fork, it's 
as if IC5.x has been put to bed when a variable ic6.x is still 2 years away. 
The first demo is slated for July 2012.

So from a business standpoint, anything I am doing now - no matter how well 
written, will assuredly need a rewrite sooner than planned. As these systems 
grow and evolve, at some point you have to say do I keep dumping time and 
money into this, or do I need to get the client onto IC6. This is something 
that was never in the original estimate, and it is not a trivial task 
considering a rewrite, and all the testing that go along with replacing 
something that is already working.

That attitude was based on Racke's phrasing, which I took out of context but 
that Jon and Peter have clarified.

But I agree with you somewhat in that, will IC 6.0 be good? I think it will 
because the same people that wrote 5.x are writing 6.x, and they are not 
dummies. Will it still be IC? No, even though Jure said it will use the 
concepts and ideas of 5.x I have yet to hear anything mentioned that will be 
the same. So what will it be? It will be the Next IC. That means it will be 
better on memory, more easily configured and maintained, and more compatible 
with existing (non IC) plugins.

The way I see it, if IC5.x continues to operate for another 5 years, I'll 
take on the rewrite on my own time. What can affect this is the PCI standard 
making keeping up to date more of a priority, and some updates, like perl, 
breaking IC, but there appears to be maintenance support.

I'd like to see some things happen though.

#1 I'd like to see a realistic guesstimate when a fully function IC 
replacement will be ready. Whether it is 2 years or 5 years makes a lot of 
difference how I run my business.

#2 Are there some projects that the community can fund that will "lessen the 
blow"? Maybe we can start using the new syntax now with a middle man? This 
will lessen rewrites of tomorrow at the cost of speed today. I'm fine with 
that.

#3 Is it possible for the community to pay for an interim tool that that 
will run IC 5.x and 6.x simultaneously for a domain? This will allow one to 
migrate to the new system over a year or two. We can build new features for 
clients in IC 6.0 while taking our time converting older code. I would think 
the main issue would be session management?  I do primarily back office 
systems, very complex compared to a store. It irk's me that I would need to 
work in IC5.x bang up to the date that a full rewrite is done... It's not 
like a store where complex features are less frequently requested.

Who knows, maybe we can start writing 6.x code in 5.x as or running IC 6.x 
apps inside or alongside 5.x by next summer...

I guess what I am asking for is akin to XP Mode... We need a IC5 Mode :-)

#4 Can someone at the Dev Group throw up or link to an interim wiki or forum 
for users to use as they wish? I'd like to post tags that I have available, 
and others could too. We can also try to get funding together for IC 5.x or 
6.x projects - which depend largely on the answer to #1. If you guys can 
pick a good one, even if it is off site, and link to it (make it official) 
we'll take care of the rest. Although it would be nice if it was somehow 
searchable on the main site.

I know I'd like to spur a feature rich coupon system as mentioned a few 
months back, for ic 5.x or 6.x. One of the forums can even be about IC6. 
You might think I can do this on my own, but I'd rather have something that 
has the potential to be indexed in your search, or something that at least 
one of you is already familiar with. I myself have never dealt with forums 
so would be picking one out of a hat.


---
Lastly, I think in the begging of 2012, or possibly sooner, I will throw up 
some redesigns of icdevgroup.com, because it does have an image and 
marketing problem. The fact that starting to use it today assures a more 
complex tomorrow makes it even worse, so, we need to spin that in a positive 
light, and we need to let people know it is a product to take seriously.

Paul







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