Reactor vs Core

[eluser]JasonS[/eluser]
Ha, this thread had one post when I checked this morning. Shows what a little bit of baiting can do.

I liked the idea of reactor but a bunch of people in this thread have said the following.

Core - Boring + Stable
Reactor - New Features + Unstable at times

For some reason someone else took this as...

Core - Corporate sites
Reactor - Anything else

Suggesting that stability doesn't matter in a number of projects. This is BS. If Reactor isn't going to produce bug free stable releases then it shouldn't exist.

CI has been stagnant for way to long. Its support of PHP4 = Fail. I mean supporting a version of PHP when it has been abandoned by PHP itself... it being linked to ExpressionEngine has both pro's and con's. I think the con's out weigh the pro's as EllisLabs won't rework sections of EE to change CI.

You also have this issue of maintaining backward compatibility. EllisLabs seem to put a massive importance on this. I don't think it is a massive deal reworking a library between major versions. Especially if it pushes the framework forward.

At the end of day Reactor will be a good thing if...

1) Its stable.
2) Has new features that people actually need.
3) Maintains the simplicity + small footprint of Core CI
4) Has a clear road map for the future.

It will be a bad thing if..

1) Rushed updates lead to instability
2) Features are added haphazardly as the perceived need arises as apposed to following a road map which clearly specifies what the reactor framework should be.
3) Multiple releases in a short time frame. I mean... a .1 increase could be done once every 3 months with fixes between. Releasing more often than this will mean that many people will not even use versions as they are mid-project with the last version. EllisLab's epic time lapse between updates has one benefit. They can fully assess the impact of the last update and assess what a new version should contain. A release every < 3 months doesn't allow you do this.