On Aug 24, 2004, Havoc Pennington <hp@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 22:36 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> Sometimes you can introduce a few options into a single base framework >> that will make it good enough for pretty much everybody. Other times, >> you'll have to introduce significantly different frameworks to enable >> the system to behave optimally for different uses. >> Too much choice can be bad, but concluding from this that choice is >> bad in general, and then proceed to always take it away, is far worse. > That's what "sound technical decisions" are: negotiating these sort of > tradeoffs. There's no free lunch. Doesn't change the fact that it's very likely to be impossible to make it perfect for everybody. It's like ergonomics. You can set standards for table and chair heights such that it will be reasonably good for most people, but the more people diverge from the average the standards are defined for, the less comfortable it is for them. So when I get into an office furniture shop looking for furniture that can be adjusted to conform with different needs (e.g., I'm tall and my wife is short), and they come back to me babbling about complying with ergonomics standards, I just move on looking for something that can be adjusted to be perfect for both me and my wife, instead of permanently imperfect for both of us. The point being that you can make sound decisions and make something comfortable for most people, but if you deny everybody the possibility of making it perfect for them with minor effort, they might end up choosing something else that, although poorer for the average user, suits their needs better. If enough people take this stance, your efforts will have been wasted. Choice is good. When you're looking for something that's perfect for you, good enough just isn't good enough :-) -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
