Dangers of Implementing Programming Frameworks into Project Source Code Prior to Release Candidate Status?

Question

I've been dwelling on this topic for a long time now. I just wondered if anyone else out there shared my opinion. Isn't it essentially a bad idea integrating preview versions of programming frameworks into your project code before they are at release candidate level?!

I had a situation a few months ago where my boss insisted on using the Managed Extensibility Framework to handle dependency injection in a huge internal system we were building. We built the code around a preview version of this framework and then Microsoft released another version of it. We updated and everything broke, huge amounts of code had to be re-understood and changed...total pain!

...I'm getting the feeling that Ria Services could present us with a similar problem (or any other framework chosen to be implemented into a projects source code prior to full release state).

Opinions welcome.

Answer 1

Well, what else can be said? You're right - using something not even marked as release candidate for core functionality in your app is a considerable risk.

To alleviate the risk you could try creating a compatibility layer that you could adjust to "translate" to new versions of the framework - but that involves a lot of guesswork that may not work out.

And of course you can just stick with the preview version, if it already does everything you need. But that will bring its own headaches down the road.

All in all, I'd avoid it unless the newfangled thing in question definitely enables you to do something important that would otherwise be impossible, or yields massive productivity gains.