"Avi Bryant" avi@dabbledb.com writes:
On 7/5/07, Craig Latta craig@netjam.org wrote:
Having a short-term-gain mindset at all times will cause the total effort to be much harder and take much longer. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh (it sounds harsh to me, you don't need to convince me of that :). Despite that, I think it's still best to speak plainly here.
I'll speak plainly back, then. You asked in a recent message how to get someone else to use Spoon. The only true answer I can give is, offer them a short term gain. Yes, short term incremental improvement causes the total effort to be greater, but it also mitigates adoption risk: at each incremental stage you can assess whether or not people are actually going to use the work you're doing or not, and modify what you're doing accordingly.
I submit that also, some of the ideas are controversial. One person's leap to the future, is another person's final plunge into stark raving madness.
It is really cool that Squeak has people like Craig trying out wild ideas. At the same time, it's really cool that Squeak has a proven core on which you can reliably develop practical software. Heck, without that practical core, how much of the cool stuff would even get off the ground?
We should cherish and respect both kinds of software and ideas within the community.
Lex