{"id":3380,"date":"2013-08-01T10:10:37","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T00:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/?p=3380"},"modified":"2013-08-01T10:10:37","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T00:10:37","slug":"stewarts-dot-twenty-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/01\/stewarts-dot-twenty-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"Stewart’s dot twenty rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

I realised I haven’t written on this for a while and I was asked about it again today.<\/p>\n

Stewart’s dot twenty rule is that a piece of software is never really mature until a dot twenty release.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was a variant of “never use a dot zero release” which has been around the industry for a long time (i.e. always <\/strong>wait for X.0.1).<\/p>\n

My first written observation on my variant on this rule was back in 2006:<\/p>\n

This is a really stupid<\/strong> metric of software maturity. It is, however, disturbingly accurate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It seems to continue to be both really stupid and disturbingly accurate. The first few point releases are still going to have rough edges and once you get to about 5 you likely have something that’s intensely usable for a good number of people, by dot 10 the more complex use cases should start to be okay and once you get to dot twenty, then you could say it’s mature.<\/p>\n

A topic for another time is how releasing often<\/strong> is one thing but maintaining a release<\/strong> is quite another.<\/p>\n

Previously:<\/p>\n