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The 5 Stages


In all areas of live things grown, mature and decline. In Buddhist scripture that is called Samsara, the wheel of life. IT is no exception to it. When something new, a violation of the natural order of things, comes along and displaces beloved technology, every fanboy has to go through the 5 stages of grief:
The 5 stages of grief

  1. Denial
    There is no question OLDTECH is the best in the market, there is nothing that comes close, especially NEWTECH doesn't live up to its expectations. Look at OLDTECH's installed base, the capabilities and the compatibility
  2. Anger
    How on earth anybody can deploy or use NEWTECH? Are they out of their minds? What siren songs does NEWTECH sing, so they are blindly following that new crap? NEWTECH needs to be eliminated from the face of the earth. Why does nobody see the superiority of OLDTECH? It is so obvious!
  3. Bargaining
    OK, how about coexistence of OLDTECH and NEWTECH? Lets add OTHERTECH to OLDTECH, so it is more attractive. If there is a discount, will you stick with OLDTECH? Look at your code base, migration is too expensive! Don't fall prey to the "the grass is greener on the other side" syndrom. Look at all the experts still around, be part of that community
  4. Depression
    How could it happen that OLDTECH fell into decline? It was my everything, my lifeblood (optional: return to step 2). How can IT ever work without OLDTECH? What should I do, now that my heart is lost?
  5. Acceptance
    Nobody can take the memories of the good times with OLDTECH, still there is a decent living to be made with it and demand can sustain me. Actually NEWTECH does look really interesting and exiting now, I'll give it a shot
It has has happened before and it will happen again (so hold back your reaction).
Like in eMail, the solution here is non attachment and letting go

Posted by on 02 January 2014 | Comments (8) | categories: Software

Comments

  1. posted by Naveen on Thursday 02 January 2014 AD:
    Awesome article! The quote "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" fits perfectly with iPhone and Apple's resurgence.
  2. posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Thursday 02 January 2014 AD:
    @Naveen: Fanboy? The only one who tried to laugh about the iPhone was Balmer Emoticon biggrin.gif
  3. posted by Ray on Thursday 02 January 2014 AD:
    Moving to stage 5 now but stage 2 may just pop back up for a while. In the immortal words of Hugh Laurie's Prince Ludwig in Blackadder II, the Inconweeeenience caused will lead to revenggggiiii!

    { Link }

    Emoticon biggrin.gif
  4. posted by Tim Tripcony on Thursday 02 January 2014 AD:
    Pythia reference FTW.
  5. posted by Naveen on Friday 03 January 2014 AD:
    Fanboy? Nope. Admirer? Yep. Actually iPad was ignored and derided upon its introduction, so it can also be a great example.

    And I actually own Android. Emoticon tongue.gif
  6. posted by Werner Götz on Saturday 04 January 2014 AD:
    Irgendwie habe ich beim Lesen an so manche Diskussionen bzgl. Notes denken müssen...
    Siehst Du also Notes auch als OLDTECH? Welche ist dann die zugehörige NEWTECH?

  7. posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Sunday 05 January 2014 AD:
    @Werner: Ich würde Notes nicht als OldTech bezeichnen. Meine Liste:

    - PC vs. Mini Computer
    - Smart Phone|Tablet vs. PC
    - Cobol vs Java
    - IMS vs RDBMS
    - RichText vs HTML
    - Phonecalls vs Texting
    - eMail vs Social
    - Creationism vs. Evolution
    (even the pope caved in)
    Emoticon biggrin.gif stw
  8. posted by axel on Monday 06 January 2014 AD:
    My current list:

    Intelij IDEA vs. Eclipse
    Vaadin/Grails/AngularJS+REST vs. JSF 2.0 with primefaces
    TomEE vs. Application Server
    Gradle vs. Maven
    guava vs. jakarta commons
    java with groovy vs. java without groovy