No, I didn't die and I'm not in a coma, per se. I'm trying to finish MoneyWell 1.4 and ship it.
This has been a very difficult release because I started the beta process very early. There was a method to my madness though: I wanted people testing the new direct connect downloads from financial institutions, so I added that feature first and published a beta.
Our beta testers, therefore, have had to put up with several "alpha" cycles of MoneyWell that normally aren't pushed to the public. Normally when I develop software, I try to put all the features in it before beta so that everyone knows what the final release looks like and they are just waiting for the reported bugs to be fixed. This has not been a normal beta test.
If you're a developer and you want to get really sick of looking at your software, just try testing it for over three months straight. I rarely even run the 1.3 release so I've forgotten how much has changed in the new version. I keep thinking, "Did I actually do anything in this release?" Glancing down the new feature list helps me realize that I have and that this will be a very good version of MoneyWell.
I've also been blessed to have a great group of beta testers. Not only is it the biggest I've ever managed (over 200 people have tested 1.4), but they have been very quick with bug reports and have given me great detailed steps and sample data files. If this were a movie, someone would be standing right now starting that slow clap for the MoneyWell beta team while everyone else stood to join in.
I will do a proper blog post after this release is out and try to avoid another coding coma. It will be hard though since I'm already working on the iPhone version of MoneyWell and that will most likely consume my time through the end of the year. And we have lots of video tutorials and web site enhancements planned. And then of course coding will start on MoneyWell 2.0. And there's also…
Let's just say, I don't foresee any boredom in my near future.
Peace.
