[mythtv-users] "broken" as a synonym for "not as I expected." WAS: Re: mythvideo sort order

[Jay Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Kristjansson" <danielk at cuymedia.net>

> On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 16:06 +1000, Julius Roberts wrote:
> > My point in raising this is that it is all well and good to have
> > developed complicated software for some fantastic task, but if it
> > doesn't work the way people might usually expect it to, then that in
> > my mind is it's not reasonable to blame the user for their poor
> > perception of the issue. There's complicated, and then there's just
> > plain poorly executed.
> 
> All tools fail to work the way someone expects them too. When a
> developer replies to a complaint with "it's working as designed"
> that doesn't necessarily imply that the design is correct, but
> it puts the onus on the complainant to convince others that the
> way they think it should work is superior*. And if they are not
> developers or paying someone who is, then they additionally need
> to convince someone else to make it happen.

That "all tools fail to work the way *someone* expects them to" -- IE:
that there can always be found someone who will be stonkered by the
present design -- is true, but not really a counter-argument to any 
*specific* accusation that a design point violates the Principle of Least
Astonishment.

Not, Daniel, as you note, that that carries any water in the FOSS
community -- which has always been, IME, one of the weaknesses of the
FOSS community.  Having done both programming and analysis/design for
many years, I can testify that some of the best coders on the planet
cannot design their way out of a paper bag.  And there are some good
designers who can't code very well, too.

Architecture and contracting are two separate disciplines when people
are getting paid to do them, but, you see, design is widely viewed as
"the fun part", so precisely the people that I think FOSS projects need:
designers, who may not be good coders -- are the people who get left by
the side of the road; FOSS is not a "meritocracy"... it's a "code-ocracy".
If you can't write it yourself, you'd better be a *damned* good salesperson.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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