Inter-Fail

In 1998 someone came up with an interface for external application to use, when plugging into our system here, this interface started at version 1, and later in 2000 version 2 was released... since then there have been eight further revisions, and in 2002 someone - not me - someone mandated that we would only support from version 3 and above...

All work has since carried on adding features but always supporting backwards to version 3.

The trouble now, eleven years after that declaration, we've moved the software on so much that we can't support that backwards retrograde two steps to version 1 and 2... 

This won't be a problem tho.... no not a problem, in 2002 everyone moved to at least using version 3... right...

RIGHT?

Oh shit.

That's right, nearly no-one did, not even our own internal departments, I've been sending mails out since 2005, another chap - Hi Graham - he moved the interface from version 4 to version 5, he sent out mails... The guy - Hi Steve - who moved it from 2 to 3 and 4 he sent out mails.

But here we are fucked, with a dwindling number of plug-ins because idiot developers will always be idiot developers, "It works why change it"... yes, that's a good rule of thumb, but look where its left us here now, look where its left Microsoft browser security!  That attitude simply causes hassle in the long run, for a quite interlude passed.

Now, as the developers of the interface here, we publish our data and standard out, we define how the externals use our software... yeah... Well I wish the two - yes there were two - managerial level persons whom used to publish these interfaces on had actually tested the software coming back from the externals actually conformed to the documents they were publishing.

Because, to have worked on something in 2005 and in 2013 suddenly be asked to go and look at it is a pain, not least because we retired the operating system it was written on, we no longer even support the processor type (16bit) that the thing was released for and you can't run 16bit code in Windows 7 which we now use to develop code with!

Developers the world over, if there's a new interface, take note and use it, don't just think "oh its backwards compatible" and you managers out there, when your brains tell you to do something - like push a new version as mandatory - actually push it - David & Anita I'm looking in your long lost, no longer working here, directions! grrrr.