Quicken 2008 Release 5

Posted by JimH on December 16, 2007, 12:09 pm

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Rick Blaine wrote:

> I just today went from 2006 Deluxe to 2008 Deluxe and aside from the

transaction

> attachments, haven't seen anything worth the update.

> To Intuit's part, there really isn't a lot you can do for a mature product like

> a personal finance tracker. All the groundbreaking features were figured out

> years ago. Now they have to come up with reasons to get people to upgrade every

> year and that's hard.

I just went from 2006 to 2007. It was half the price of 2008 at Amazon.
It will let me continue downloading until 2009 comes out. That will give
them time to fix 2008, and the price will be cut in half again. One year
behind on releases seems to work well for me.

Since changing versions two weeks ago, I've noticed the following...

- Graphs and charts are now bright colors. That was easy to do, but
added no value.

- Screen arrangements that used to work, don't work any longer. My home
screen arrangement used to have stock quotes on the left, and net worth
along with scheduled payments on the right. That will not work unless I
now expand the window further. If I do that, the brokerage summary
screens won't work properly. It moves other fields up, and hides most of
the data.

- The account bar on the left now has some extra buttons that take up
just enough screen real estate that my accounts no longer fit. It isn't
a big deal, but I liked it better before.

- Downloads now appear to be multi-threaded. Stock quotes are still not
reliable, and news is no longer displayed. One step forward, two steps
back. That wasn't part of the release change, but is a reflection of the
services that they deliver.

- Backup to CD stopped working again. It worked fine in 2004, but then
stopped working after one of their updates. It worked fine again in
2006. It doesn't work in 2007. I've added Karen's Replicator to perform
my backups.

- They still can't handle US Savings Bonds. I continue to use SB Wizard
to track my bonds, and just dummy up an account in Quicken to reflect
the value.

- The tax planner doesn't provide an accurate assessment of taxes for
me. It includes tax payments that it shouldn't, and there is no easy way
to eliminate them. I made some very large payments least April, and it
shows them as 2007 taxes paid. There are work arounds, but basically, it
is not flexible enough.

There are plenty of areas where Intuit could focus their attention. That
said, for the price, it is an indispensable tool for me, and overall,
the quality is above what I see in other complex software. Considering
the price, IMHO it is a very good value.

-Jim-

Posted by Steve Larson on December 18, 2007, 9:06 pm

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No flames here, you are spot-on in your assessment.

> On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:47:01 -0700, JimH

>>bjn wrote:

>><snip>

>>>>

>>>> Now let me see concrete evidence that programmers in South Asia

>>>> (or any other country) are less competent, or produce lower

>>>> quality products than,

>>>> let's say, American programmers.

>>>

>>> Quicken is at r5 and it's not even next year yet.

>>I retired from software development in 2006. I used to develop test

>>drivers and device drivers for just about all of the various operating

>>systems for use in testing storage devices. I worked with Indian

>>programmers on some projects. They were very sharp, friendly, hard

>>working guys. They were always willing to take turns working nights in

>>order to be available for conference calls. The code that they developed

>>was as good as most of what I saw from the American programmers.

>>I'm not a fan of high tech American jobs being shipped overseas, but it

>>seems inevitable. I just think that our government should stop offering

>>tax incentives for doing it.

>>I don't have Q-2008, so I can't speculate about the quality of it. I

>>just bought 2007 at Amazon. But, the release numbers don't necessarily

>>mean that the quality of the developers is poorer. The reduced costs of

>>development may let them accelerate patch releases. Instead of waiting

>>until 10 things are fixed, they can release updates for each one of

>>them. I don't know if that is the case, but it is a possibility.

>>Also, from reading here, one release was a security update for the file

>>encryption. Those are the kind of things that probably wouldn't have

>>gotten done with the higher price of developing software in the US. For

>>less money, they can hire more programmers in India than they could here.

> IMHO, the Q08 quality is very poor. There were way too many bugs (the

> tax planner was flat-out broken), and the application behaves in a way

> indicating its internal structure is messed up. Like, the screen

> often flickers 10 or more times when doing an operation, because the

> code isn't sure what's really on the screen, so it's playing the,

> "let's be safe and repaint those controls," game.

> IMHO, the four updates aren't because they're "accelerating" patches.

> (But, nice try. :-) )

> I think the quality problems in Intuit's products aren't the fault of

> programmers, developers, or testers per se. That is, the problem

> isn't that Mary is sitting at her keyboard doing Java or C coding, and

> makes a mistake, and writes crappy code.

> The problem, if there is one (and I think there is, but I'm sure

> others do not), is one of software project management. Whether the

> developers and testers are here or in Vietnam doesn't matter. What

> does matter is how their development cycles are managed, what metrics

> they use, the testing done before a release, whether a tester can pull

> the brake cord on a release, how open the communication paths are,

> etc.

> You have to manage offshore development differently than developers

> who live down the hall from you. IMHO, local development is superior

> to offshore development for new products, but offshore can pay off in

> routine maintenance or testing. But no matter _what_ you choose to

> do, each development team type needs different kinds of project

> management and communication styles.

> IMHO, Intuit has fallen flat on its face with Q08, and I think

> whomever is responsible for development and test management, and for

> product direction, ought to have their head on a platter. Q08 is a

> joke. Most of the new features are eye candy and/or are

> "improvements" on things that simply didn't need improvement. And

> while I don't, like anyone else here, know Intuit's internal bug

> reporting, I'm very sure that this app has been way more buggy than

> other apps I've bought, of equal or greater complexity.

> Just my $.02. Flames welcome. Not that they will need an invitation.

> :-)

> John

Posted by bjn on December 16, 2007, 9:52 am

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wrote:

>bjn wrote:

><snip>

>>>

>>> Now let me see concrete evidence that programmers in South Asia

>>> (or any other country) are less competent, or produce lower

>>> quality products than,

>>> let's say, American programmers.

>> Quicken is at r5 and it's not even next year yet.

>I retired from software development in 2006. I used to develop test

>drivers and device drivers for just about all of the various operating

>systems for use in testing storage devices. I worked with Indian

>programmers on some projects. They were very sharp, friendly, hard

>working guys. They were always willing to take turns working nights in

>order to be available for conference calls. The code that they developed

>was as good as most of what I saw from the American programmers.

>I'm not a fan of high tech American jobs being shipped overseas, but it

>seems inevitable. I just think that our government should stop offering

>tax incentives for doing it.

>I don't have Q-2008, so I can't speculate about the quality of it. I

>just bought 2007 at Amazon. But, the release numbers don't necessarily

>mean that the quality of the developers is poorer. The reduced costs of

>development may let them accelerate patch releases. Instead of waiting

>until 10 things are fixed, they can release updates for each one of

>them. I don't know if that is the case, but it is a possibility.

>Also, from reading here, one release was a security update for the file

>encryption. Those are the kind of things that probably wouldn't have

>gotten done with the higher price of developing software in the US. For

>less money, they can hire more programmers in India than they could here.

Let me backtrack a bit from what I wrote previously, I was not intending to
say the programmers were worse than the US counterparts. No matter where
you look, there is a range of programmer competence, whether it is the US
or India or Eastern Europe. The trick is to latch onto the good ones when
you outsource, and manage them and the process properly.

(btw, congratulations on your retirement. I'm looking forward to retiring
soon after 35 years of software engineering...)

Posted by Steve Larson on December 18, 2007, 9:05 pm

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Talk to anyone who has done work in the Oracle applications arena. In my
experience, everything that Accenture pushes across the ocean ends up
getting rewritten by our domestic programmers. Typically we get thousands
of lines of code, the rewrite ends up as hundreds of lines. In my past 20
years in the business of large corporate back-office applications, I have
seen nothing but shoddy performance from our friends overseas. It has only
gotten worse over the past 5-10 years as Oracle, Accenture, and others
exponentially expand their presence in India and other cheap labor sites.

> Andrew wrote:

>> John Pollard wrote:

>>> Steve Larson wrote:

>>>> To my knowledge, it's been at least a few years. If anyone

>>>> else has more accurate info, please provide.

>>> I'd like to see even a shred of evidence that Intuit has its

>>> programming done overseas.

>> http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/167600162

> Thank you Andrew; my initial assumption stands corrected.

> Now let me see concrete evidence that programmers in South Asia (or any

> other country) are less competent, or produce lower quality products than,

> let's say, American programmers.

> --

> John Pollard

> First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com

> Please reply to newsgroup

Posted by John Pollard on December 18, 2007, 9:49 pm

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Steve Larson wrote:

> Talk to anyone who has done work in the Oracle applications

> arena. In my experience, everything that Accenture pushes

> across the ocean

> ends up getting rewritten by our domestic programmers.

> Typically we

> get thousands of lines of code, the rewrite ends up as

> hundreds of

> lines. In my past 20 years in the business of large corporate

> back-office applications, I have seen nothing but shoddy

> performance

> from our friends overseas. It has only gotten worse over the

> past

> 5-10 years as Oracle, Accenture, and others exponentially

> expand

> their presence in India and other cheap labor sites.

You're something Steve: you're not just a jerk; you're an
asshole zenophobic jerk.

Your pretended "analysis" of Quicken is totally worthless ...
whatever problems Quicken (or any other product) is having, has
NOTHING to do with the nationality of the programmers who write
the code ... NOTHING.

My experience tells me you haven't a clue what you're talking
about I guarentee you I have at least as much experience in the
"business" as you do. And I have plenty of experience with, and
knowledge of, programmers from "other" countries.

My experience also tells me that decent people NEVER say the
things you say,

If you don't like those "evil foreigners", you have a personal
problem.

Keep your personal problems to yourself.

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
Please reply to newsgroup