Sorry, but being “more into tech” doesn’t mean anything when it comes to debugging apps and issues.
Ask any developer here and they will tell you that most users contact them with “your app doesn’t work” (or they just leave a one-star review on the app store), and that’s it. Even Athom’s support desk, typically, puts the blame on the app developer when something is actually wrong with Homey’s core, SDK, Web API or mobile app.
So many issues are still popping up with the new firmware and app that it’s simply not ready to be shipped to regular users.
I don’t agree with you @robertklep . I signed up for a non-complete product when I ordered. I will not blame any community developer for bugs before athom claims the software is finished.
…also possibly another improvement that Athom can implement - simply don’t let user to submit empty debug without filling in context or some easy form would be great) - but I guess it’s unrealistic now when they are so busy. Can’t imagine how hard it will be now for some devs when even some new users will join the community… I would rather not mention that I would be happy to see content of the logs/debug I’m sending also for my own troubleshooting (eg. as “Experimental user option”) - including Homey debug itself - I guess that’s complete black box.
You’re already making the common user mistake that when Athom claims the software is finished, it’s actually finished.
Pretty much all the crash reports I get for my apps are due to issues beyond my control as app developer, even though they occur on what everyone considers “finished” software (the current firmware for the old Homey’s). And what do users do? They come to me (I don’t blame them for doing so, but it gets annoying that these issues happen all the time, and have done for a long time, and Athom is apparently unable or unwilling to fix them).
That’s not what he said Robert, you are making assumptions.
Most my apps don’t have crash-reports, so i can’t really speak for those apps.
However, most of the apps that i took over, did and they had many, many crash logs.
And most of them were “faults” of the developer, not the SDK or Athom.
BL had 26612 crash reports, a lott of them because of unhandled exceptions when setting invalid capability values or variable values.
Chronograph had 95345 crash report, most that i walked through to fix, were once again simple unhandled exceptions when setting capability values or (flow)token values, etc…
Simple Log had 12206 crashreports, almost all of them had in one way or another, to do with not being able to send notifications (rate limited, notifications disabled, etc.).
So perhaps your app(s) work great, but you cannot generalize about all apps or developers, because at least a few apps really need(ed) maintenance.
Well, personally, i am not really gonna wait for that for Athom, but build something myself.
Before i needed to re-write some stuff, i had already registered the NPM simplesyslog-npm for a package i was building, to include into other apps.
It will allow USERS to enable logging for a specific app, and be able to write that into the normal log with required comment.
Only after that there will actually be something in the diag log.
And when disabled, no (develop) logging would be done, saving memory.
But that is just my personally solution to the diagnostic issue.
He literally says that he will start blaming community developers (for issues) once Athom claims the software is finished.
I’m sure he won’t, but I’m just pointing out that in my many years of being a Homey app developer, my experience is that when an app crashes, users will blame the app developer, even if it’s due to issues that are beyond their control. This is compounded by Athom’s support desk more often than not putting the blame on the app developer. And this is for a firmware that has been “stable” for many years.
That’s why I think it’s a very bad idea to start sending out Homey’s to regular users, even if they come with a big fat warning that the software isn’t finished yet.
Indeed you can’t.
I’m not generalizing. I’m talking about my own apps, and I’m talking about the old Homey, not the new one.
But since you want to go there: Athom has, when the new Homey was announced, stated that app developers should port their app to SDK3 so it can run on the new Homey. They missed out on saying that they (apparently) did a full reimplementation of SDK3 that has significant changes to the old SDK3, which means that “just” porting an app to SDK3 doesn’t necessarily make it run on the new hardware, something you yourself are quite aware of.
So now developers have to scramble to get their apps working on the new hardware, while also making sure it still runs properly on the old hardware. Can you blame those developers for not “maintaining” their apps? Because I can’t.
What?
Do you know what literally means?
Because it is absolutly not literally what he said!
(You can infer it like that i suppose…)
Well, i do totally agree with you that the HP2023 shouldn’t be send out.
But that’s more because of what you wrote next:
Indeed, and because of that, i agree that HP2023 should not be send out to (just) anyone (from a tecnical view, not a business view).
Indeed, if there are developers not updating there app because of the amount of extra unmentioned (in advance atleast) work to be done, i owuld totally understand that.
Especially if you did already put in the work to root to SDK3 before and now again need to do a lott of work.
However, from my point of view, that has (almost) nothing todo with the diagnostics and crashreports being send about the apps that i took over: (Allmost) All errors are because of simple developer “mistakes” and been there for years, just never been handled by the developers.
They were all sdk2, so the errors don’t even have anything todo with the rooting at all.
But perhaps there is just a big difference in the userbase: Most/All of my (maintained) apps are somewhat Advanced (Logic) tools.
Except for the BeNext app, i don’t have any real devices app.
Thuse i am guessing (making the assumption) that my userbase just differs from your userbases.
Plus, do we know for a fact that Athom is sending these thing out to “just anyone”?
Or are there perhaps criteria they are watching for, like, does a user have an (active) communityforum account?
I agree with @arovik that we are all aware of that we have bought a unfinished product. Even though I’m not a developer, I greatly appreciate the work that you developers do that gives me the product I love. Without you, Homey would not have been what I am willing to pay for. I think most users see it that way, although a few may not understand this and express their frustration in other ways.
The question that is relevant and needs to be resolved is perhaps how do you developers want to get the information to you and how can we solve a process so that it works smoothly for you. Any thoughts from you @robertklep@Sharkys
For me, a simple gauge would be that at least a few days should pass on the HP2023 dev channel on Slack that no issues get reported, and that all outstanding issues should be solved.
Just one comment - best would be to have some kind of “sign in” bonus or “beta” discount - with that, there will be no people complaining they bought a crap (and I personally love Homey, the community and I’m astonished, what developers are capable of and also I’m aware that HP2023 isn’t really finished yet) but I’m also sure there will be always some percentage of people complaining (after all, they are running their flats and houses on Homey, right). That complains could damage the brand and proposal from Robert make sense - yet I believe there is also something like Return of investment, R&D costs etc. that Athom needs to compensate .
Eg. there are ambassadors programs, for more advanced users…something like that do not exist in case of Homey and it’s a pity. In case of Homey, ambassadors are developers…and that might be dangerous combination.
I read you and I would really like to have a clear point on the development and on the sending of new homey.
I ordered it in November and today I don’t see anything coming .
I find it rude for people to keep on asking about something that the community cannot answer, or that has already been answered a dozen times, or that can easily be found by just doing a forum search.
.