Discussion
I've switched many of my open-source projects to yearly release cycles, and honestly, it's great.
Turns out software development is much more enjoyable when you stop pretending every Tuesday is a historic event.
Instead of switching contexts 8 times a day, I now switch projects about once a month.
@fribbledom I think I understand why and fully support this. Would you still be willing to release a minor fix in between for a severe security problem, should one be reliably reported? Not saying you should, I am genuinely interested in how you feel about such a situation.
Yes, absolutely. These are usually fairly small fixes that, once identified, aren't particularly difficult to review.
This isn't meant to be a rigid rule. Priorities and schedules change. It's more about being deliberate with my time. I think both the projects and I benefit from fewer context switches and longer stretches of focused work.
People will just have to get used to the idea that 12 months of radio silence doesn't necessarily mean a project is dead.
@fribbledom
I feel genuinely bad for developers that aren't old enough to have been involved with the waterfall model of development.
Most will never know what it's like.
@fribbledom yea a major release about every year and a half is my limit. At the same time I don't stop doing major releases even though they're are quite a lot of people using point releases because it's a mechanism to drive bug hunts.
@fribbledom I hate seeing open issues is my problem.
Ah well, once you reach four- or five-digit numbers, you stop caring.
@fribbledom That would give me major anxiety
This probably isn't ideal for a brand-new project with a mountain of TODOs. But for mature projects, I've found that giving yourself more time between releases is incredibly valuable:
You stop treating every idea as an obligation and every bug report as an emergency.
Turns out a little distance between having an idea and implementing it can do wonders for software quality. Occasionally you will realize that doing nothing was actually the right call.