Feature complete - Bug Triage - Golden Release.... ahhhhhh software :-)

I've been so busy lately that my world has just been a complete blur.  In the past week I've had a job change, helped to release a new blogging community (http://regexblogs.com) and been involved in numerous out of hours endeavours.  Put all of that on top of my family (which includes a newborn), co-ordinating a new swimming pool and a new bridge to cross our creek and you can clearly see that there is the potential for stack overflow.

Anyways, tonight I finally sat down - at 9:00pm - with a cold beer to catch up on some blog reading - and found some intruiging entries.  One in particular caught my eye...

First, Robert McLaws posted an entry relating to a new server control that his company has been developing:

    http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/posts/37278.aspx

...after that post some alternative offerings were pitted against his solution to which Rob replied with an entry which encapsulates many of my own feelings about developing sofware:

    http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/posts/37293.aspx

I've developed stacks of free software, code snippets and articles; crikey, I even wrote a free article for Microsoft!  But, let me tell you folks, most free software is not worth the paper that it's written on. 

In my time of "throwing code around" I've come to know how hard it is to develop a complete solution and then stand behind it!  In my time I've found that it's pretty easy to build 50% of a solution but that building a complete solution is really difficult.  That's why I often post "dinky" stuff that demonstrates a *concept* but, to build something *complete*... well, I only attempt that during my day job ;-)

In essence, you get what you pay for and, if you use something of mine from the web don't question what you got but instead focus on what you paid :)

For the record I believe that Rob McLaws is developing an outstanding reputation in the community and I wish him all the best with his business!