this is a little 'unkind', esp towards 'cash' supp`ed to be on the 'elgg core team' ;-)
however.. what exactly did cash promise you 69 days back ?

i personally have not encountered any substantial
nor insurmountable problems with aspects of elgg.1.8
either with my own domain installs nor with any of my commercials.

i do somewhat agree with the 'without everything being intact',
but the gaps have not so far held back any progress and..
i must say - with some hopes that this may insipre
a tougher stance against version issues -
that i have yet to see, encounter and then overcome
any 'fits' - due to elgg in it's current incarnation.

and my liking and love for this platform remains undiminished since
my first infatuating glances with v.0.8@2007 --> v.1.0 2008 until now @v.1.8
there have been some spots @1.8 where i may not agree with the desgng intent
or perhaps the implementation, but it is still the most flexible platform
from my developers-eagle-view of all the cms`s i have met in my life
before switching my loyalties to elgg in 2008.

i find elgg.1.8 to be *more *developer *friendly in my eyes and
in my IT life so far...i have seen some of the worst and some the best
as well as worked with pleasure with that which has been offered.

plugins...? 3rd party plugins have bever been the domain on control for
the elgg core team to manage and if, as i suspect you have, problems
with 3rd party plugins - the responsibility hangs irrefutably on those
developers for some tlc to ensure their plugins behave with the enhanced
elgg core apis and the functions - 1.8 *was a major break from certain
'clunkiness' that has persisted within the previous versions.

@Dhrup, i must agree.......

I am an illiterate when it comes to computers, programming, coding and so forth. Being an aircraft mechanic and auto mechanic for somewhere near 20 years now i much prefer things of a mechanical nature and not electronic.

That being said, i have managed to stumble upon elgg and construct a site in 1.8 with absolutely no experience.

As far as plugins and elgg core itself, from my experience most dev's on this site are more than helpful when questions are asked if one puts a little effort into whatever problem may arise.  If basic questions are repeated over and over without so much as a search on here or google, then expect some colorful replies or no reply at all. 

As far as your developer having fits, maybe you should find a dev more suited to elgg.  Here would be a great place to start:  http://community.elgg.org/groups/profile/75603/professional-services

I don't know who your developer is or what challenges he's faced - yes there was a bit of difficulty with the upgrade mostly due to markup/views but it's really not that bad.

i am interested to know if there is a testing team for elgg releases... do the coders do it themselves and then have the community do the testing through using the code?

i have been involved as 'professional' coder and also tester on large projects before and i know how much computer time is needed to refine the system and i know that our own body and health is WAY more important than all that (something many of us are totally in denial of) - which adds to the complexities all the more. what i sense with elgg is that due to the free-ness of it and the money addicted individuals within society who wish the coders to pay them to use water and sidewalks, the testing is passed on to the community and is not organised enough to ensure issues are processed thoroughly in a way that ensures a solid framework is produced. that is the dull side of creating code and i totally resonate with the ones who prefer not to do it.. ;)

In 69 days of a dedicated 8 hour per day development you should have the best website around. There are guys and gals here that put together some wonderful plugins and themes. elgg is a very complete framework that allows the developer to work on a blank canvas where the only limitation is the developers creative vision for what or how it should operate, look and feel. I spent 2 years on my first project and it is running flawlessly in the commercial world and I wish that it was on the easy to implement 1.8 soon to be 1.9 platform. 

In less than a week you can upgrade your 1.7 site to 1.8 without major problems. Theming has become easier in elgg 1.8 and developing plugins is far better than 1.7

May be you are using heavy custom plugins that might have slowed down the speed of upgrading your site to elgg 1.8, however there is documentation to do it yourself or you can try in the professional services group to find someone to do it for you.

Bashing against a core elgg developer is not gonna solve anything. Instead you should post here what your developer finds hard to do, so that we can help you.

When compared with previous versions Elgg 1.8 is the most easiest version to work with. The most recent 1.8.8 version is very fast and stable than 1.8.0. The problems usually happen when a developer approches elgg just as a php system. Take time to learn Elgg API's and the MVC architecture and you can convert elgg into any sort of application (social network, CMS..) just by using the core engine alone.

Recently we had a bad time with an upgrade of an elgg 1.7 site. The problem was because all the queries in this site were custom created as usual SQL queries. This wont work when you replicate a site locally because the subtype, metadata id etc differs from installations. So for this site, we had to completely create new plugins. Only in such a situation the upgrade is a nightmare. Otherwise its an easy procedure and in 1.8, you can do it more easily than in 1.7 (thanks to all the new plugin hooks introduced). 

I agree with the others. Compared to 1.7 Elgg 1.8 is much faster, better and more developer friendly. The core developers and other contributors have done a great job.

I have converted many old Elgg sites to 1.8 including some very highly customized sites. There hasn't been any major problems while doing this. The amount of uncompatibility between Elgg 1.7 has been very reasonable considering the benefits gained in 1.8.

Aggressive development always divides opinions. There's always the progress versus backward compatibility. Sometimes there just comes times when we have to break stuff to get forward.

I fully agree with Juno or Mohhamed. Elgg 1.8 is a great progress and amount of changes between 1.7 and 1.8 is reasonable.

Simple website can be upgraded in a few days, even the most complex one can be upgraded in one month of a dedicated development.