[mythtv-users] RANT: MythTV has a *horrible* end user experience.

[Sarah Hayes]

> And if that's the case, I can understand their asking for help.  If what
> they ask interests me in some way, I may even be willing to do the code
> for them (time permitting).
Which is fair enough, to be honest though I think the guy had a point.
Some UI elements (in 0.20.2) could do with a little work. Although
expressed, rather poorly.  Although I did say it was probably a QT issue
rather than a Myth one (and probably fixed in 0.21 along with the UI
changes). 

Although with 0.21 'imminent' (spotted Feb/Mar mentioned as potential
release time) is it worth raising a defect against the soon to be
obsoleted 0.20.2? Not quite figured out how Myth works like that. 

> >  or b) don't want 
> > to do their day job at home.
> 
> Hmmm.  Isn't that saying that these professional programmers who don't
> want to do their day job at home are just simply expecting the MythTV
> devs to code things to their liking out of pure laziness?  Or perhaps
> they feel their time is more valuable than that of the MythTV devs. 
> Perhaps it's something I haven't considered, and if so, I'd love to
> learn what that is so I can better understand the attitude.  IMHO,
> anyone with programming skills who uses FOSS has two options: 1) learn
> to live with the things they don't like about the software or 2) fix it
> themselves.  There is no "3) complain until someone fixes it for them." 
> Note that 2) may actually be, 2) solicit feedback for a proposed
> approach--with explicit mention of your willingness to do the work--and
> then fix it themselves, but this differs from "complain until..."
Personally I always look at it like this:  most people exist in a
Windows world.  Some of them pick up a book on MythTV (at least two of
them exist) go "Gee, that's cool" and build themselves one.  Something
doesn't quite work or doesn't work as they think it should.  In a
Windows world all you can really do is bitch and moan, you're never,
ever gonna speak to someone who wrote the code in a big professional
program and you're never really going to see it change.  Of course, FOSS
is slightly different and yeah, you could well be bitching about
something the guy in front of you just wrote.  Conversely appearing and
going "Hey, this bits funky, or is it just me?" can work far better in a
FOSS forum as you don't tend to put the devs backs up :)
I'd apply the same philosophy to any largish FOSS project that's had
stuff written/published about it. 

Unfortunately option 3, exists, is alive and quite irksome.  But can be
useful, often by skim reading peoples rants you can pick up on defects,
perhaps not major ones but annoying niggles people close to the project
(or use it every day) often don't see.  So even those people have uses.
Think of them as a small step above 'robo-QA' utils it helps.  Really.
It does. 

Plus, a rant seems as good away to kick of a discussion about something.
You can't say it hasn't work... although probably not as the OP
intended :)

> > And yes, I can program C++ thank you very much.
> 
> Put up...  Nevermind. ;)
Already do in a limited way :)  Check the names in the screenshooter.sh
script yeah BASH woo, meh :)  I'm currently figuring out how GIMP works
to test out my idea for increasing user feedback... but my cat has more
artistic talent than I do.  Grr.