On Friday 13 August 2004 06:33 pm, Erik Steffl wrote: > John Check wrote: > > On Thursday 12 August 2004 03:34 pm, Erik Steffl wrote: > >>John Check wrote: > >>... > >> > >>>One act gigging with this stuff is worth a dozen coders when it comes to > >>>legitimizing the platform. There's so much potential with what's here > >>>today that it blows my mind, but if it's "by geeks, for geeks" it really > >>>limits were > >> > >> not that long ago it wasn't even that. The sound/audio/music software > >>in linux is improving rapidly. obviously, you get the by geeks for geeks > >>stuff first because it cannot be any other way - it takes time to make > >>the program stable enough to be usable by general public. > > > > Yup. There's a definite progression. I'm not unfamiliar with development > > cycles, as far as does it _have_ to be that way, it's a debatable point. > > not really, you will always have nothing, then something incomplete > sort of usable and only after that there's something usable (if you're > lucky:-) > The operative word is _always_. How long is such a thing tolerable? > developer could opt to not release unfinished stuff but then how > would he get requirements? > > ... > > > There's is a tendency though, for free software developers to put some > > things off because "We'll make it right for 1.0". Which in itself is > > good, but we have a quality obsession (which is also good) whereby a 1.0 > > release really means something, unlike commercial software. > > The upshot of this is as the code matures, decisions that were made early > > on become hairier and hairier to address. Ironically, this can lead to > > massive redesign and rewrites which pretty much wipes out most of the > > accumulated documentation in terms of accuracy. > > I don't remember a project (hobby or commercial) that would not go > through major design changes. This is true for major project (with all > the docs that osi 9000 (or whatever it is for software) requires) all > the way to small (but non-trivial) scripts. > > It is a problem but I don't think there is a way out, it's kinda like > there's no perpetuum mobile, you always loose some energy (=docs always > lag, requirements change, bugs are found etc.) > > OTOH I guess now is a good time to focus on usability since the tools > are on the verge of actually working (for general public, i.e. non > programmers, non sysadmins) > > I just find it somewhat not entirely appropriate to make it sound as > if developers were ignoring users/documentation/user-interface etc. > That's the whole mindset that I see expressed fairly often, don't mean > to accuse you of accusing developers, actually your email was quite > reasonable (so I am, to some extent, using your email as a vehicle to > rant a bit:-) > > erik
