After 1.0

Ok; first serious post.

What happens AFTER 1.0 "ships." Does 1.0 become a long-term stable release while 1.1 and such are "beta" or "experimental", or do things pretty much go on as before, with periodic "fractional" releases being the recommended code to run?

What will justify going to 2.0 instead of 1.8 (or whatever)?

Wait, so we arduino is, in theory, sort of like in alpha stage of development ATM? I have heard mentions of v1.0, but what exactly is it anyway? Huge new features? Shiny buttons? I MUST KNOW NAO!

Here is the annoucement:
http://arduino.cc/blog/?p=392
Eberhard

jezuz,

If you start up the Arduino IDE it says ALPHA right on the splash screen... :-?

I think this is a concept inherited from Processing.

Processing is quite a few years old by now, and i think it was first sometime last year they released version 1.0.

So it's more like a "we have come a long way, things are stable and working, so now we can concentrate on the future" thing.

I think there will still be a need to make small / incremental improvements and additions, etc. I don't have a good vision of what an experimental branch might be, or what 2.0 would be.

I actually like the current IDE numbering (16,17,18 etc) and how the current board name translates to 2009. Implies continuous development, rather than having to wait for the next major version before new features are emphasised.

good luck on your efforts! however i just don't understand what kind of a difference this would make to the users? I personally believe Arduino as it is at the moment is a great idea...working on having a 1.0 release might make it look like any other development tool out there... We can perhaps stay alpha forever... remember the days when we were kids... all innocent, not caring bout anything and all that joyous exploration...the moment we became adults.. we lost all of it ... i think of arduino in the same way...and to add the forum and the site are good as well... far more functional than most sites... unless you want a site like apple :wink:

(The real problems don't show up till after version 3. (4 being an "unlucky" number in many Asian cultures.) And they get worse after version 12, since 13 is unlucky in European cultures, and 14 is another unlucky number in Asia again. cisco recently hopped from version 12.4 to version 15.0; silliest thing ever... :slight_smile:

and how the current board name translates to 2009

How does the board name translate to 2009??????? :-?

Duemilanove = Italian for 2009

How does the board name translate to 2009??????? Huh

He surely meant Duemilanove, nothing to do with the forum "board"...

edit: @andrew: huh, lost the race :wink:

(The real problems don't show up till after version 3. (4 being an "unlucky" number in many Asian cultures.) And they get worse after version 12, since 13 is unlucky in European cultures, and 14 is another unlucky number in Asia again.

Since 28 is the next perfect number that should be probably be the last revision.
Otherwise we need to go to 496 :wink:

(* jcl *)

I thought the answer is 42. :sunglasses:

Lefty

I thought the answer is 42

Arduino ain't that important.

I'm pretty sure it will always be "1.0 beta" :slight_smile:

m

While I love the whole idea of what Arduino 1.0 means I can also see what people are getting at when they say that Arduino should stay in alpha forever.

The whole x.x numbering style does seem a little old and part of what makes Arduino so different and appealing is that it doesnt feel like "yet another open source project". Users will probably fear that 1.0 will spell the end of Arduino as we know it and relegate it to become one of thousands of development projects out there.

That said there still needs to be a way to stabilise Arduino at some milestone and say "Ok this is the foundation that is Arduino and its stable foundation". A reference spec for the Arduino.

That will go a long way towards instilling confidence in Arduino as more than just some open source toy and it will help provide a reference platform for which content and tutorial developers can say this is "Arduino 1.0 compatible" and not have to worry about the continuous state of flux.

Having a stable reference in terms of API and what is included and what feature set is available is just too important.

So I think Arduino should stabilise at 1.0 but it must never go on to become another numbered open source project, I hope they keep using unique naming conventions for the IDE releases like 00xx and keep using unique names for the boards instead of version numbers.

Perhaps instead of going "Uno Punto Zero" they could just go Arduino Uno ( if my limited understanding of Italian is correct ;D ). Seeing the words Uno Punto Zero is defnitelly better than seeing 1.0 so that is perhaps an angle worth looking. But then again this is just my 2c.

Looking forward to what comes out of all this though.