Re: it's scary

[Ewan Birney <birney ebi ac uk>]

On Mon, 29 May 2000, Sergio A. Kessler wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've been reading the "libole2" thread, and it's scary ...
> 
> it's scary to see what was in the beginnings a project where things must be 
> simple to take this directions ...

[snip]

I am sure sergio that alot of people share your concerns. However, the
fact that the gnome core is hard to grok and/or that bonoboo is large
*does not mean* that it is incorrect.

Your comment should be rephrased as

  "Please make sure that the 90% of usage of Bonoboo etc is easy
from a programmers point of view without compromising the extensibility
of it for the tricky 10%"

This generally means putting a "facade" (using gang-of-four notation)
or similar, easy-to-grok abstraction above it. I have no idea whether the
gnome guys/bonoboo guys have done this, but I know (from being the
architect for a different large system) that complaining that the "core
is too complex" is not a useful comment.

Complain that the "easy to program" interface should be "easy to program"
but that does not mean that the guts should be simple.


Of course, for this to be a success someone close to the core group has to
become the champion for the weekend programmer, making sure the easy to
program interface both exists and works well. I have no idea if
gnome/bonoboo has such a champion - if not - you, collectively, should
find one ;)


just my $.02


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Ewan Birney. Mobile: +44 (0)7970 151230, Work: +44 1223 494420
Open Source - Open Genome - Ensembl - http://www.ensembl.org
<birney@ebi.ac.uk>. 
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