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On 26 September 2011 20:44, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> Yeah, I just saw that. Admittedly, when I saw this section: |
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> |
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> --begin-section-- |
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> |
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> I'll add at this point that this isn't just a programmer problem. I've |
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> seen entire companies get locked into the idea that “perfecting” the |
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> program was everything. They then neglected what the users wanted from |
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> the program, supporting the users and so on. Most of us who've been in |
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> the business for a while have seen this cycle play out over and over |
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> again. |
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> |
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> Expanding on that second point, Torvalds says that's why the Linux |
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> kernel team is “so very anal about the whole ‘no regressions’ thing, |
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> for example. Breaking the user experience in order to ‘fix’ something |
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> is a totally broken concept; you cannot do it. If you break the user |
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> experience, you may feel that you have ‘fixed’ something in the code, |
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> but if you fixed it by breaking the user, you just violated that |
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> second point; you thought the code was more important than the user. |
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> Which is not true.” |
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> |
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> --end-section-- |
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> |
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> I immediately thought of the udev thread. |
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|
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The only problem with that attitude is that it eventually leads you to |
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the same position that Microsoft is in with Windows -- where too many |
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years of refusing to drop backwards compatibility were completely |
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holding them back. The direction that they took with Windows XP, drop |
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raw DOS support, release-freeze (9 years!), gather bug reports, fix |
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bugs(!), has actually left them with a pretty stable and functional OS |
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in Windows 7 (The release candidate was not quite as strong). |
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|
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If you read the Old New Thing, you will still find some absolute |
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madness left in there to maintain support for Win3.1 programs, and |
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hacked around in some really awful ways. |
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|
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Breaking User Experience is a major factor of open-source, it's |
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iterative though, and the general consensus is that each generation of |
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software improves on the previous one (that said, I'm pretty worried |
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about the directions of both gnome3 and kde4). |
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