Diana vs Maia
Hi,
I'm just curious about why there are so many blog posts about Maia, although the official version is still Diana, and no EAP of Maia is available. Does it mean that Maia will be released within the next few months or that there's not much to say about Diana ?
It makes me wonder why those features are not available in Diana, and it's more frustrating than teasing
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Hello Cedric,
The official version (8.1) is Diana, not Selena. Selena was the codename
for 7.x. :)
Yes, the EAP of Maia will start very soon.
--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"
Sure, I edited my post when I saw I made a mistake, but it doesn't change my question
Speaking as someone who develops software for wide distribution, the answer's pretty easy : Because that's what the dev's are working on right now. Dev blogs are for devs to talk about what they're working on right now - which is what will ship 3 or more months from now.
As for why the newest features aren't in the latest release, the answer is probably related to the difficulty of time travel. Since many of the features that they're blogging about weren't in Java EE when Diana was out, it's not possible for them to be in the current release, which was written 6 months or more ago.
Posts like this encourage developers to not blog about what they're working on - and really, it'd be a shame if they stopped.
Are you serious ? If you were discouraged by such posts, I would not be glad to work with you. The problem is not to post about what you are working on, nor to write about the wonderful things a developer is able to do. The problem is that the IDEA blog does not separate blog posts about current features and future features. I'm pretty sure it discourages users from buying IDEA, thinking about the features they would eventually have if they waited for the next version. The blog mixes tips about the current version, which is perfectly ok, and posts for enthousiasts (like me, using EAP when available). Jetbrains has encouraged users like me to test EAP versions for years, and I just consider quite strange that the EAP of Maia is not available but blog posts are. It's quite uncommon from Jetbrains
I agree with Jim. It's a blog, let them blog about whatever takes their fancy
:) I for one really appreciate both the tips for 8 and the glimpse into
what is being developed for 9. Hearing about the 9 features before they're
available (even in EAP) means we get an even earlier chance to provide feedback
even before the feature is ready for the general public. Plus it gives us
something to look forward to. I've already used a few of them to make some
Eclipse using colleagues quite jealous :) As Dmitry says, the EAP will start
soon enough (just 6 issues remaining if http://www.jetbrains.net/jira/secure/BrowseVersion.jspa?id=10132&versionId=11970&showOpenIssuesOnly=true
is anything to go by) anyway, so this "quite strange"(?) situation won't
remain so for much longer.
Hello Chris,
These issues don't really mean anything. The main thing holding back Maia
EAP is that we want to release the final version of 8.1.1 first (otherwise
people would switch to Maia and pre-release EAP builds wouldn't get enough
testing).
--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"
Cedric -
When a dev blogs about the cool new thing he's working on, he probably just finished it. That means that you, by definition, don't have it yet. So what do you propose? That he wait? If that's the case, you won't get the post - devs have other things they need to do, and such posts are mostly a labor of love.
Whinging about not having it yet will only discourage such posts. That's human nature, and I'm sure that despite your protestations, you'd be just as discouraged as anyone else that someone came along and used your shiny new feature to complain.
And you write:
The problem is that the IDEA blog does not separate blog posts about current features and future features.
So, that tag that says Maia, that's invisible to you?
Stop complaining - you'll get the new build when it doesn't have big nasty major bugs - which is really when you want it, not now. And asking developers to withhold information? That's just silly and counterproductive.
(and in case it's not clear, I'm not a JetBrains guy, which is why I get to be a touch more direct with a troublesome user than they do.)
jetbrains guys - keep blogging - I like hearing about the new features.
Hey, don't misunderstand me. I never said I was against those posts. I love to know about what the Jetbrains guys are working on. I was wondering about the fact that in the lasts posts, most of them were related to diana, although I think there's much to say about the current version too. Imagine someone who never used Idea yet. With blog posts that on the main page almost exclusively talk about the future features won't make that guy eager to buy the current version. It's a pity as it is awesome too. My opinion is that the blogs entries should be separated : a blog about the available versions, and one more "techie oriented", with future features and so on. I don't think a newcomer will ever understand what the "diana" tag means...
So, to conclude, don't stop posting, we all agree that's really nice and valuable. However, if blogs are not separated, I think (and it's my humble opinion) that the Jetbrains team should try to equilibrate posts between those of current versions and future ones.