All over the Ruby on Rails blogs right now, people are getting excited about the upcoming release of 1.2 and all that it brings.

However, one of the comments on the announcement post above, strikes a chord with me:

jesus on 23 Nov 08:42: Release early, release often. not exactly right? Why do we had to wait 8 month were a lot of features could have been released as say rails 1.5? Watching rails_edge an break some stuff with an update is not for everybody. I don’t want to figure out stuff with no documentation for why it breaks my app now. So please do more interim releases.

(sic, throughout)

One of the biggest problems I have with myself is not releasing early and often. I spend way, way too much time trying to get things perfect, rather than just get something up no matter what state it’s in. I try to change my behaviour, but it’s not clicked yet that users just want regular, small, incremental updates.

It’s nice to know I’m in good company, but the way 1.2 has been handled is a little annoying. I’m glad it’s here but I would have much preferred a regular schedule of small releases every 8 weeks and deal with 4 small incremental updates rather than face one great big update. I have no idea how much work this update is going to create for me right now, but I’m thinking that there are some dozen or so applications I have belonging to clients that will need checking carefully.

Even so, I’m grateful for all the hard work done, and will hold myself back from biting the hand that feeds me too hard. It must be a bit of a slog as a coder if all you face is criticism and no praise whatsoever. So, if DHH or any of the Rails core are reading this: thanks for all the work.