Comment Eval Software (Score 3, Interesting) 699
I often find that thirty days is simply not long enough to evaluate a product. The world of software development is frequently a turbulent one and priorities can shift from one day to the next.
A good example is something that happened recently. We had a memory leak and I was asked to figure it out. I said that a profiler would be an excellent tool to have so I downloaded evals of a couple of popular products. Before I could get to any evaluation we sorted the problem out using other means.
The tools we used we crude and even though the immediate problem was solved, I still wanted something more sophisticated. I moved on to other more pressing issues and when I finally had a quiet moment to install and play with the profilers, I realized my thirty days was gone.
I think sales departments assume that developers live in a very linear world. That we:
1.) Isolate the need for a product.
2.) Collect relevant information.
3.) Download demos
4.) Conduct a formal evaluation
5.) Based on the merits, make a decision.
This is not the world I live in.
A good example is something that happened recently. We had a memory leak and I was asked to figure it out. I said that a profiler would be an excellent tool to have so I downloaded evals of a couple of popular products. Before I could get to any evaluation we sorted the problem out using other means.
The tools we used we crude and even though the immediate problem was solved, I still wanted something more sophisticated. I moved on to other more pressing issues and when I finally had a quiet moment to install and play with the profilers, I realized my thirty days was gone.
I think sales departments assume that developers live in a very linear world. That we:
1.) Isolate the need for a product.
2.) Collect relevant information.
3.) Download demos
4.) Conduct a formal evaluation
5.) Based on the merits, make a decision.
This is not the world I live in.
