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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Macintosh - FORUM HAS MOVED! > Recent Avid Events… (MakeMusic OT?) | Forum Quick Jump
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Mike Rosen
himself
      
Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 14146
| Posted 7/3/2012 8:00 PM (GMT -5) |   | | |
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Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628
| Posted 7/5/2012 7:32 AM (GMT -5) | | I think the real problem is not whether the people who take over are competent -- as engravers or as programmers. It is about losing the acquired knowledge of the existing staff.
You can't just hand over the source code for a program of that scale to completely new people and say "OK, bug fixes and new features by Tuesday, please". You need programmers who know why things were done in a certain way. "Oh yeah, it might make more sense to use a loop-switch there, but we need to handle trombones as an exception AND step around a bug we've not fixed yet." Comments in the code are only going to get you so far.
Assuming that most of the staff are not offered (or do not take up) relocation, then that is the real shame, and the source of problems, regardless of how good the new employees are at their jobs.
"This is me helping."
Finale 2012, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.7.4
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410, HP Laserjet 5200 DTN
Ancient Groove Music www.ancientgroove.co.ukPost Edited (Wiggy) : 7/5/2012 6:39:08 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Jari Williamsson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 3246
| Posted 7/5/2012 8:26 AM (GMT -5) | | Wiggy said...
I think the real problem is not whether the people who take over are competent -- as engravers or as programmers. It is about losing the acquired knowledge of the existing staff.
You can't just hand over the source code for a program of that scale to completely new people and say "OK, bug fixes and new features by Tuesday, please". You need programmers who know why things were done in a certain way. "Oh yeah, it might make more sense to use a loop-switch there, but we need to handle trombones as an exception AND step around a bug we've not fixed yet." Comments in the code are only going to get you so far.
Assuming that most of the staff are not offered (or do not take up) relocation, then that is the real shame, and the source of problems, regardless of how good the new employees are at their jobs.
This is absolutely true. Also, the libraries used for music notation is mostly custom-made, it's not like in the computer game industry where every company use almost the same set of libraries. IMO, the number of development years on a specialized product such as music notation software is of extreme importance to create new functionality without introducing a whole range of new bugs.
Jari Williamsson
Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM
www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site | | Back to Top | |
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rpmseattle
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 419
| Posted 7/5/2012 3:00 PM (GMT -5) | | Competition between Finale and Sibelius has greatly benefitted us as end users, and is essential.
It appears that Sibelius will stay with Avid, but, with the main Sibelius headquarters being closed, it's a huge upheaval, and there is a good chance that innovation will be a casualty in all of this. And the fallout *will* trickle down to Finale users at some point in some form. The last thing we need is Avid's Board of Directors outsourcing their tech support and other vital services, at a point when both companies were actually raising the bar...
I have collected and posted some information and links about what is going on, including Avid financial information and a link to an interesting collection of anonymous reviews of Avid by current and former employees:
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/?p=4063
I have linked back to this thread from the post, so please continue to post relevant comments here.
The current CEO of Avid is Gary Greenfield who was hired in 2007 on a five year contract to turn the company around. Here it is, the fifth year, and Avid frantically throwing stuff overboard. Go figure. If you'd like to drop him a line and voice concerns, his email is [email protected]
Finale 2012, 2011 | Mac Pro 8 Core Xeon | OSX 10.6.x
www.musicprep.com/makemusic
www.rpmseattle.com/of_note/category/finale/ | | Back to Top | |
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Jari Williamsson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 3246
| Posted 7/5/2012 4:12 PM (GMT -5) | | rpmseattle said...
Competition between Finale and Sibelius has greatly benefitted us as end users, and is essential.
I agree. We need more music notation programs to compete, not less.
I read the following on the Sib forum:
"It would be great to know how much Avid makes with Sibelius. It could also be helpful to know how much MakeMusic makes with Finale."
First of all, IMO this comparison is irrelevant. Sib has been bought by a huge elephant, financially speaking. Sib isn't that important to Avid, compared to the other remaining products. And for Finale, I think the financial gain for MM would be quite hard to properly evaluate nowadays, since Finale is so integrated within the company, compared to Avid. Some "Finale user issues" are not necessarily pure Finale issue, since much stuff are shared with SmartMusic and/or other products.
For Sib, I think one of the crucial question now might be if Daniel Spreadbury is staying with the product or not. If he's not, the 20th September of 1957 might appear pretty fast.
Jari Williamsson
Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM
www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site | | Back to Top | |
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