[H-GEN] Windows to *nix

[McBofh]

Anthony Irwin wrote:
> David Jericho wrote:
[snipped]
> Again I am wondering why you feel that way. I can think of many freat 
> free software programs that windows users use on their computer over 
> comercial equivilants.
> 
> How can one have too much freedom? if its your computer you should be 
> able to do what you want how you want.


Anthony,
the essential problem is that users of computers want "it" (ie the
computer, its OS and all+sundry applications) to "just work".

If your app doesn't "just work" then you have failed your user base.

My goal when writing software is to ensure that (a) it interoperates
seamlessly with the existing infrastructure, and (b) that the user
should not require reading any manual or howto/readme/quickstart
guide in order to be productive with it.

David is quite correct when he asserts

|Free software is generally rubbish. The sooner the OSS world realises
|that most of their software is total and utter crap, the sooner we'll
|actually start to see progress. It would also be nice if closed source
|developers also realised this before launching and subjecting me to it.
|There is such a thing as giving someone too much freedom.


The great thing about the internet is that everybody can take part
in it and show off their skills.

The horrendous thing about the internet is that everybody can take
part in it and show off their skills.

Most people who write OSS are awful coders who regard software
engineering principles (let alone practices!) as evil and concepts
to be shunned in favour of 1337ness and popularity.

And your comment on preferring vim or (x)emacs over IDEs shows me that
you don't really understand why IDEs exist or why developers make use
of them. I, personally, love to use XEmacs as much as possible. However
when I'm writing Java, XML or (shudder) UML .... an IDE such as netbeans
is essential in order to remove the extra crud that these more expressive
languages require. Perhaps you should talk to some professional developers
about what they really use to do their work.



James C. McPherson
--
Solaris kernel software engineer, system admin and troubleshooter
               http://www.jmcp.homeunix.com/blog
Find me on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescmcpherson