Greg Copeland wrote:
<RANT>
I'd personally rather have people stumble trying to get PostgreSQL
running, up front, rather than allowing the lowest common denominator
more easily run PostgreSQL only to be disappointed with it and move on.
After it's all said and done, I would rather someone simply say, "it's
beyond my skill set", and attempt to get help or walk away. That seems
better than them being able to run it and say, "it's a dog", spreading
word-of-mouth as such after they left PostgreSQL behind. Worse yet,
those that do walk away and claim it performs horribly are probably
doing more harm to the PostgreSQL community than expecting someone to be
able to install software ever can.
And that my friends is why PostgreSQL is still relatively obscure.
This attitude sucks. If you want a product to be used, you must put the effort into making it usable.
It is a no-brainer to make the default configuration file suitable for the majority of users. It is lunacy to create a default configuration which provides poor performance for over 90% of the users, but which allows the lowest common denominator to work.
A product must not perform poorly out of the box, period. A good product manager would choose one of two possible configurations, (a) a high speed fairly optimized system from the get-go, or (b) it does not run unless you create the configuration file. Option (c) out of the box it works like crap, is not an option.
This is why open source gets such a bad reputation. Outright contempt for the user who may not know the product as well as those developing it. This attitude really sucks and it turns people off. We want people to use PostgreSQL, to do that we must make PostgreSQL usable. Usability IS important.
</RANT>
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