KDE Programs Naming Convention

[Dotan Cohen]

On 11/01/2008, D. Michael McIntyre <michael.mcintyre at rosegardenmusic.com> wrote:
> > If they won't use my stuff because they don't like the name, then they
> > won't use my stuff until I change this and that and the other too.  People
> > like that are never happy, and it is a waste of time bothering with them.
> >
> > Good riddance.
>
> After reflecting on this at work all day, I want to add that I'm certainly
> open to suggestions, but there is a large measure of meeting somewhere in the
> middle to this.  I'm railing against the sort of people who will stop at
> nothing less than demanding that you duplicate some commercial app feature
> for feature, menu for menu, and who aren't willing to concede anything for
> all the effort you've put in to get as far as you have, which might not be as
> far as you wanted to get, but was the best you could do, dammit.

That is what I'd expect from you. You are known for getting off your
ass and getting things done (got you into the Rosegarden CVS). I'm
rather known for that as well, though much less in the computer sense.
However, as I'm sure you know, most of the real world people do
_expect_ that a program will have a certain degree of functionality
and useability. They don't realize, until it is explained to them and
they see messages like this on a mailing list, that much of the work
is done by volunteers. In the beginning, I was floored when guys like
Dag or Larry Ewing would personally answer my questions on mailing
lists. Even now, the maintainer of gspca is helping me get my Philips
camera working in Ubuntu. Normal people expect that a program is
_ready_, and never expect interaction with a dev. Much less being one.

> Writing this crap is really hard, you know.  A lot of the people doing
> development work are professional software engineers by day, but then there
> are also a lot of people like me out here.  I'm a truck driver with a BA in
> foreign languages.  My last formal programming class was on an Apple IIe, and
> was probably based on Apple Pascal.

I know it's hard, and so do the users. However, minimal useability
features that are not hard to implement are expected. Such as a useful
name.

> It's very, very difficult for me to write code and work on modern, GUI-based,
> object-oriented software, and I do it out of love, even though everyone tells
> me I'm stupid for pissing away so much time in pursuit of something for which
> there is so little money that it would make a lot more sense to spend the
> time working at Burger King instead, if I wanted some reason not to spend
> time with my wife and kids.
>
> Then people come in and piss and moan to the end of the earth over something
> as trivial as a name.  A name!  Who gives a rat's ass what the damn thing is
> called, as long as it works?!

The name is certainly not trivial. I just answered Derek on his idea
that the importance of a name may be a cultural thing, see that email.

> It just hit a nerve in principle, even though nobody was actually pissing or
> moaning about Rosegarden's name.  It's the kind of thing that makes me want
> to say the hell with everything, and give up.
>
> But then who would work on Rosegarden?  I have only written maybe 7% of it,
> but my 7% mattered.  The whole love thing.  Damn.  I think you have to be
> certifiably insane to do this kind of thing for a hobby.

Warden!

Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il
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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
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