David, Thank you for pointing that out. It was insensitive of me to be so blunt.
I've snarked about the design of the forums for about as long as I've been aware of them. I still don't think they are great but I certainly don't mean that as any sort of personal criticism. As this thread was discussing some long lived projects like this can end up with a lot of legacy code one can't just toss out regardless of how much you want to. It's not like I've never been in that guy either. I still have a rather quaint web interface that's used daily and makes me cringe every time I have to look at it. Which is rare because it works reliably. And I've been the guy sending illustrated emails - virtual tech notes, if you will - to users explaining how to use some feature that is so incredibly brilliant I can't fathom why these people don't recognize it as such and educate themselves to the level necessary to revel in such magnificent programming. And had my feelings hurt when voices on the other side of a partition mention it dismissively and I see no one ever uses it. And when that's not enough I've had this conversation: Company owner: Why can't the database do this? Me: It does! I put that in 3 months ago when we talked about it. All you have to do is blah blah blah. CO: Yeah. That's too hard. Nobody understands it. Me: (Thought balloon) OMFG I am standing in a field lecturing to the wind. Me: (Voice) What do you think I could do to make it better? CO: I dunno - but it's too hard right now. A couple of years ago I was at a retrospective show for a hero of mine, Richard Diebenkorn, an artist. I saw a short film of him talking about his process. To paraphrase one bit, "... so, you know, I finally realized I have never painted anything so good I can't paint over it." This resonated with me on many levels one of them being my relationship to coding. As my story above shows I can be a little narcissistic about the stuff I write. So when it doesn't work or users don't get it then clearly the problem is with them. What Diebenkorn's comment did for me was to make me realize how incorrect that is in a way I guess I was finally ready hear. I haven't written any piece of code that's so good it can't be re-written or replaced. Taken to a larger meaning there's nothing sacred or immutable about a specific database or process within that database - especially if it doesn't work for users. The degree that I choose to ignore it inevitably becomes a pain point for me and/or I stop being relevant in the process I want to participate in. On Sun, Feb 26, 2017 at 2:42 AM, David Adams via 4D_Tech < 4d_tech@lists.4d.com> wrote: > But, really, no one responsible for the forums should take any of these > comments or criticisms personally! I don't even know who the people are. > That's not the point - the use of the tool is the point. If I wrote some > software or a paper and heard these sort of comments, it would hurt. I > understand that. It might even make me mad. -- Kirk Brooks San Francisco, CA ======================= ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
