Severe disappointment (Denis)

[Denis Bélisle]

Zav - Alex Zavatone:

>> Valentina as an xtra to Director MUST play nicely within the world of
>> Director but I understand you can not and should not trap all
>> handlers for improper actions.
>>
>> Simply not protecting your users by checking that Valentina is inited
>> properly open Database is unconscionable.
>

Ruslan Zasukhin:

> Gunnar was going help you. Everybody was sure that you are all right.
> Zav, I think many developer can confirm that when somebody have catch
> deadline crisis, I have not go sleep until we get together success.
> And up to now I have never get payment for such kind of support btw.
>

Hi folks,

I have been in digest mode for a while but couldn't help react to this. 
I remember cursing V4MD for a while last summer after finding out that 
the crashes I was experiencing were due to this badly inited Xtra. A 
traumatic event, most severe and instantaneous: everything runs fine 
until BOOM, you have stepped on it and Director vanishes (along with 
all your lingo bits carefully chiseled in scripts all over the place, 
but unsaved for the last hour or so) - and you are left there, stupidly 
looking at your fancy desktop. I had to change my kids' photo, I was 
beginning to hate them. A booby trap experience you might say.  In the 
end nothing a good debug spree couldn't find but, I mean, could it not 
just *not* work, like all the others? Well, since it wasn't, I turned 
up a notch my defensive programing attitude, which I humbly admit was 
on holiday (paranoia is simply not in me), and I fancy that my code 
writing has been a tad better since. But may be I still should have 
said something at the time, and tout my disappointment about the 
absence of this elementary safety feature. It might have saved Zav's 
day. I am sure Ruslan and his team would have listened and done 
something about it - if only to have an obvious warning placarded in 
the doc. For of all the lists I have been on and all the software 
support people I had to deal with, I indeed have rarely seen this level 
of commitment and responsiveness willing to suit the needs of 
developers - at no cost.

Thanks and good luck,

Denis

P.-S.  Zav:  You say: "Partially, as a result of the crashes in 
Valentina..." - please don't take it all out on V4MD, it's still the 
best db Xtra for Director. I don't know the contract terms you usually 
abide by, but the reason why I have clients sign an agreement and pay 
from 30% to 50% in advance is to be able to make for my time and 
expenses if they want to back out at some point without giving me a 
fair chance to rectify an unwanted course of action.  So I am tempted 
to ask: are you sure that a client that nullifies a deal after seeing 
an obvious bug in such an early version of your product would in fact 
have paid you in the end?