On Fri, 4 Jun 2010, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
Op 2010-06-04 14:09, Michael Van Canneyt het geskryf:
Personally, I fail to understand what people are complaining about.
I make my programs with the tools available, and they work damn well.
Michael, the thing is that sometimes somebody will come up with a better
idea for something - yes we can sometimes think of better ideas/designs
than Borland, Embarcadero or Microsoft. They are just developers like we are!
But take a simple idea like adding Observer support to the RTL. If you
didn't support that idea, and only I proposed it.... And if we had to go
through the same arguments as before, the simple answer would have been
that NO it will not be added. EVEN though it will not break any existing
code. Then on top of that, you get people proposing stupid ideas like
implementing your own RTL simply to add one little feature.
Each idea is taken on its merit. And rest assured: core people must
sometimes struggle equally hard. It is a price we pay for stability.
It is guarded like a hen guards her pullets..
Yes the Observer issue got resolved (hopefully), but such arguments really
discourages a developer from outside the core team to propose something in
the future. Why must we always struggle with proposals - fighting an uphill
battle all the way. Some of us don't give a toss about Delphi compatibility
(we are programmers, we can work around such problems), and yet proposals
get refused even if it doesn't break Delphi compatibility (simply because
Delphi doesn't have that feature to start with), or we caught the core team
on a bad day. In the end the FPC project suffers because it couldn't
improve as quickly as some of use would have liked, or those developers
move on to something else.
That there is discussion is a necessity. It takes only 2 people for that.
In 15 years of FPC development, I have known only 2 such discussions.
I can live with that.
Yes, I was not fond of Foreach (I think it's an unneeded construct).
I was even less fond of generics. But both made it in the compiler.
So no, we're not closed. Each idea is taken on its merit, we take
into account many things. If our viewpoint is different from the proposers',
we see other (or less) things. But in the end we decide, because we end up
doing the work. Implementation is the small part. Maintenance takes a lot
of work.
And as for 'improve quickly':
- Where are the donations ?
- Where are the developers ?
As soon as someone pays me my salary to work full-time on FPC:
there will be REAL quick improvement; I guarantee it.
Till that time: FPC is a *hobby* project for all core developers.
Many have wives and children. We have never left any doubt on this.
As it is, the users cannot even get a foundation organized which would
coordinate development. I have offered many times to act as a go-between.
But nothing ever comes of it, so: get organized !
Michael.
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