The old days weren't as good as we remember them and the new days aren't as bad as we make them out to be.
 
I generally love the updates and changes. Are there specific ones that don't work? Of course there are. But the ones that do work far outnumber the ones that don't. And generally if something is really bad, it gets fixed over time. 
 
Long live the new products, new features, the new ways of doing things.
 
I just recently sold my old 1" 16 track, you can still buy them on ebay if you like!
 
PS - And I'm not a young guy! I've been a customer since the first versions, but went away from cake for a while during the early days in favor of Texture because the sync to tape feature on it worked much better. Texture was the king of keystrokes as everything about it was done with keystrokes. It was a DOS program!

I suspect the enthusiasm for the Skylight innovation is somewhat dependent on what people actually do with Sonar. It would be unusual if all users found all the changes helped them work more easily. Those who spend huge amounts of time using Sonar would be the most likely to find improvements worth learning, and would be in a relatively good position to unlearn the old way, and benefit from the new. Those of us who are Sonar hobbyists probably never developed the troublesome muscle memory that would make the transition difficult. And there probably were decisions made in the interface design that favored audio and looping vs MIDI workflow, which seems to have been a long term direction since Cakewalk morphed into Sonar. Do changes often cause frustration? You bet. Are all changes improvements? No they are not. Does anyone who makes these decisions care? I assume that they do, and that someone who put a lot of thought into it decided to improve the interface to satisfy the needs of the perceived largest number of potential users. And of course to sell the product to people who think it looks much cooler.
 

I certainly understand the OP's concerns, and I like change and new things. Loved the whole feel of X1 onwards and think our current version is the best by far - however, as much I would love to stay on top with self training like Craig does, I simply don't have the time. Full time 'real' job, nearly 60,  young children (second time around), one about to start high school, and a full on job trying to produce a couple of new albums, I go nuts trying to make things happen. Learning Splat properly, simply has not happened. I use it, well enough I think, but hardly use any of the 'new' features, mostly finding workarounds to keep things going along the lines of X2, which is what I learnt best because I had the most time  back then. Now, it's all about getting the job done, with the least amount of distractions, in the smallest time I can allocate to the job. So, I too, get very frustrated when I have to stop to either learn a new process, or to try and unravel the mysteries of latest failures, in order to get back to work.
 
IMHO, there is no software that operates like the 'old days'.  I did all the photography and graphics to get my CD out earlier this year, and that was a nightmare learning the processes involved, and re-learning the current Adobe software, to get the CD and sleeves to the printers for production. Same for preparing the music for CD audio and digital media. The learning curve was so steep I kept falling off it.
 
But would I go backwards? No. Not at all. Mostly enjoy it. And I will update to Lexington, because I always try to keep up. But I'm still allowed to get frustrated and yell sometimes, just like the OP. Just helps sometimes lol!!
 

Anderton

MGC59
I must admit that Sonar 8.5 was my most productive phase especially for Midi editing. As xxrich stated: things that used to take one click now take several (Midi Plugins for example...5 steps to open!)

   
Generally, I find that SONAR does things for a reason, although any reasons may not be obvious because I don't think Cakewalk has provided enough information on optimizing workflow. To me, learning new features is an investment...I spend X amount of time learning new protocols, but these save me 10X time overall. I think what we need more than a feature or interface freeze is better, shorter instructional materials on how to get the most out of SONAR's changes.

Agreed.  I don't think the OP's really complaining here.  If I have to be honest with myself I was more much more familiar with X3 than I am in SPLAT 11 months later.
 
That's on me, but there is frustration involved in that (BTW I think SPLAT's great). 
 
 
 
 

Anderton
Generally, I find that SONAR does things for a reason, although any reasons may not be obvious because I don't think Cakewalk has provided enough information on optimizing workflow. To me, learning new features is an investment...I spend X amount of time learning new protocols, but these save me 10X time overall. I think what we need more than a feature or interface freeze is better, shorter instructional materials on how to get the most out of SONAR's changes.

The update from 8.5 to X1 made MIDI editing simpler to learn at the expense of making it more cumbersome for repeated use. CW still has not grasped that mode-switching is a design anti-pattern, because it requires the user to shift focus away from creating music to keep track of the application state. We've seen the same mistake with ProChannel in the inspector, which requires mode-switching between the track strip and pro-channel, even if there is enough real estate for both.
 
I have no beef with UI changes if they lead to demonstrable ergonomic optimization. I don't think Skylight was an example of that kind of change.

track strip and prochannel at same time is a BRILLIANT idea yevster. the way it is at the moment is not a satisfactory thing. even being able to cycle thru the modes with a single key, eg tab, would be superior to the current system.

You guys are all pretty sharp :-)  Never suggested going backwards - just to clarify.  But the past should guide or shape the forward progress.  Okay, okay - maybe it IS just a cat thing as my keyboard's been walked on too:-)

yevster
We've seen the same mistake with ProChannel in the inspector, which requires mode-switching between the track strip and pro-channel, even if there is enough real estate for both.

 
Can you elaborate? I don't see how there could be enough real estate in the Inspector to fit both the ProChannel and the Console View-style channel strip+master simultaneously, so I must be missing something.

Cakewalk should offer "Who moved my Cheese?" in the online store.

Well in fairness, some people adapt to change more readily than others, and can even adapt to change in some areas of their lives while not in others.
 
The key to assimilating change is to see beyond a functionality's manifestation to the functionality itself. Once you realize you don't have to learn new functionality, simply a new manifestation, matters become much easier. This is something I learned doing product reviews, because at their core, related products have more similarities than differences. So, you already know much about something you've never used...you just have to find out how that usage manifests itself.
 
Then again there's one of my favorite jokes... 
 
Q: How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: It takes 20. One to screw in the light bulb, and 19 to say the old light bulb was so much better