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<blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4616559" data-attributes="member: 1054">Yeah, well, back around February or March of 2008, I said that if Game Table was in alpha in December of 2007 (which was when it was previewed and claimed to be 'in alpha'), no way was it going to be ready for launch, and Scott Rouse basically did the &quot;Are you saying I'm a liar? You talking to me? I don't see anyone else here, you must be talking to me.&quot; routine, so I basically shrugged and said, &quot;Fine, you're the one who sees the code every day, if you say it will be here by May, who am I to say otherwise?&quot; (Well, I'm the guy with 20+ years experience working on complex software projects and who knows Cheops Law, but I wasn't going to bring that up.) And here we are closing on a year later, and it still doesn't look like it will be here any time soon. If it makes it by May -- a year late -- I'd consider that a triumph for WOTC.I repeat what I said back then: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. The fact you can &quot;show off&quot; features -- or, as I am beginning to suspect was the case, have them &quot;shown off&quot; to you (management) by your development team -- is no evidence of a product anywhere near to shipping. The distance between &quot;We have the program working for one set of data hard-coded into it so we can show it off&quot; and &quot;We have the program working for all the data it's supposed to work with, including full load/save/edit&quot; is very, very, long. I do not think Scott -- or anyone at WOTC -- has ever lied about when the software would ship. I think they told the truth as they knew it. Problem is, they have very little experience with software development and did not understand just how much they needed to get done. Hasbro slashing staffing for DDI couldn't have helped matters. (And programmers ALWAYS lie to marketing. GOOD programmers lie by saying it will take longer than they think it will; BAD programmers lie by saying it will take less time than they think it will. The best software companies do not announce a release date until the program has pretty much gone gold. The worst software companies announce release dates before the spec has even been written.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lizard, post: 4616559, member: 1054"] Yeah, well, back around February or March of 2008, I said that if Game Table was in alpha in December of 2007 (which was when it was previewed and claimed to be 'in alpha'), no way was it going to be ready for launch, and Scott Rouse basically did the "Are you saying I'm a liar? You talking to me? I don't see anyone else here, you must be talking to me." routine, so I basically shrugged and said, "Fine, you're the one who sees the code every day, if you say it will be here by May, who am I to say otherwise?" (Well, I'm the guy with 20+ years experience working on complex software projects and who knows Cheops Law, but I wasn't going to bring that up.) And here we are closing on a year later, and it still doesn't look like it will be here any time soon. If it makes it by May -- a year late -- I'd consider that a triumph for WOTC. I repeat what I said back then: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. The fact you can "show off" features -- or, as I am beginning to suspect was the case, have them "shown off" to you (management) by your development team -- is no evidence of a product anywhere near to shipping. The distance between "We have the program working for one set of data hard-coded into it so we can show it off" and "We have the program working for all the data it's supposed to work with, including full load/save/edit" is very, very, long. I do not think Scott -- or anyone at WOTC -- has ever lied about when the software would ship. I think they told the truth as they knew it. Problem is, they have very little experience with software development and did not understand just how much they needed to get done. Hasbro slashing staffing for DDI couldn't have helped matters. (And programmers ALWAYS lie to marketing. GOOD programmers lie by saying it will take longer than they think it will; BAD programmers lie by saying it will take less time than they think it will. The best software companies do not announce a release date until the program has pretty much gone gold. The worst software companies announce release dates before the spec has even been written.) [/QUOTE]

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