Opinion: Constant churn breaks community learning for software applications

Opinion: Constant churn breaks community learning for software applications

A current trend that I can’t say that I love is constant churn within software applications. I have no interest to go back to the days where we got a new version of SQL Server or Power BI, etc. every few years.

It’s also not a case of who moved my cheese?

In fact, I thrive on change. However, I’ve now become really concerned about how anyone:

  • Learns to use a complex application
  • Remembers how to use a complex application when they don’t use it daily

I first really struck this issue with Azure. If I was teaching a class that used Azure, I could check every single lab on Sunday night, then Monday morning, the students would find it had all changed. That’s OK for an experienced person, but not OK for a learner.

I love the rate of change for Power BI. We’re endlessly getting wonderful new things. But I have to say that every class that I teach on this is like a new experience. I’ve got another one this coming Tuesday. I used to look forward to them but now I have a major hesitation every time, as I wonder what parts of the labs will have broken.

This is now an ongoing challenge for all this type of software though. I helped create some labs for VSTS very recently, and when I look at the product now, it barely resembles the one that I built the labs on.

Is it better? Probably yes.

But even though it might have been a few months ago, it feels like just the other week, and yet, not only has the UI changed, entire concepts have been added or removed, and the order that things are done in has changed substantially.

I don’t know the answer to this but the current rate of churn is a substantial issue.

I gather the plan with the DevOps guys is to put a set of labs on GitHub, and let people who are doing the labs point out the issues day by day as they strike them. Again, for experienced users that might work. But for newcomers, I really wonder if that’s what they’ll think.

Will they realize the app must have changed, and it’s all different, or will they just think the product is too hard to use. Either way, they’ll be very frustrated.

[caption id=“attachment_2756” align=“alignnone” width=“569”] Image by JeShoots[/caption]

And while initial learning the product is one thing, I’m worried about it longer-term. A product like VSTS lets you set up automation and you hope you won’t need to change it constantly. But if every time you go to make a change, you’re struggling to use it like you’re a newbie again, that’s a problem.

Finally, I’m really concerned about ongoing support.

The vast majority of support of software applications today happens from community resources like blogs, webcasts, etc.

Will they continue to be created at the same pace if the authors know they’ll be irrelevant or wrong within a very short time? How will end-users learn to do things when none of the online examples they find still work?

I wish I knew the answer to this.

2018-02-20