Thread: Bugs List!
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Old 06-18-2018, 10:51 AM   #114
Ted Craven
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 8,853
Folks, thank you all for your concern and suggestions about the next release of RDSS 2.1! I do regret giving overly ambitious release dates for software - and have done for 30 years - LOL (just ask my wife)! But I can't help but try to estimate those dates, and more often than not, I get them wrong.

So I won't give an estimate. The estimate is: soon enough.

Re software tools: I use state of the art tools for RDSS: PowerBuilder, SQL Anywhere database, Chilkat software libraries for internet tasks and much more. I can interact just fine with all online data providers including TrackMaster/Equibase, TwinSpires, AmWager and XpressBet. Delay is not the tools fault, it's the programmer/customer and tech support staff/bookkeeper/web site maintainer/chief cook and bottle washer - that person who also likes to bet on his own account. Perhaps too many hats, sigh ...

Re outsourcing: in 35 years of professional software development, I can count on maybe 2 fingers the number of successful outsourcings of components of large software projects (which RDSS is for sure). My judgement, rightly or wrongly, is that outsourcing modules of RDSS would take FAR more time, energy and sorrow than just doing it myself. Bedsides - RDSS software (licensing and TrackMaster data share) does not pay that much as a business, so there's not that much extra money to pay someone worth their salt to do discreet modules of it. I do appreciate the thoughts though for solutions to get it done more quickly for everyone's use, and the kind words of encouragement. (And I don't really mind 'squeaky wheels' ...)

In the end, it WILL all get outsourced somewhere, but presumably not for many years to come: there are a number of very valuable things I have left to do with it. And, I do enjoy working and talking (often behind the scenes) with 99.99% of everyone I meet

Jeebs and lostandwon - you are not the first ones to have thought of that evolution of RDSS ...

I promise to release the next version of RDSS as soon as possible, but not sooner. In the meantime, despite some admittedly irritating current glitches, we'll have to make do with the useful tools as they were left us by Doc Sartin and the others.

Thank you all!

Ted
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