Re: gEDA-user: gEDA just hit SlashDotOrg

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Aug 12, 2009, at 11:22 AM, DJ Delorie wrote:

>
>>> Assuming you know how to use chainsaws in general, of course.
>>
>> Yes, and that last sentence is my point. gEDA is a chainsaw in a
>> world of where most only know handsaws.
>
> I think you're trying too hard to bend my analogy to your needs.

Your analogy? I believe it was mine ;-) And from here it looks like  
you don't want to consider my point.

>   I
> suspect that, no matter what anyone else says, you'll figure out a way
> to say that our users are too stupid to do what we want to make them

Not stupid. Stubborn. I don't know why engineering schools teach  
"you're a specialist and you should fear what you don't understand".  
As a physicist, I was required to take a class that relentlessly and  
explicitly taught the opposite.

> do, when in reality, they shouldn't *have* to adapt to our way - we
> should offer them something that's familiar to them, even if it's just
> a starting point, in order to reduce the barriers to them trying gEDA.
>
> I've spent some time recently with Xilinx's ISE tool.  It's to FPGAs
> what gEDA is to PCBs.

No it's not. gEDA is a general purpose toolkit, one (and only one) of  
whose applications is feeding your pcb program. ISE is much, much  
more specialized.

>   It consists of a number of command line tools
> wrapped in a GUI.  When I first installed it, I didn't want to figure
> out all the command line options for all the tools, I wanted to write
> some verilog and put it in a chip.  I wanted *results* and I wanted
> them *fast*.  The GUI helped me do that.  Later on, I figured out the
> command line tools so I could put them in a Makefile, but I never
> would have gotten to that point if I hadn't had the GUI to help me get
> started.

I have no objection to wrappers. What I object to is the constant  
demand to fix perceived problems by violating the fairly clean,  
modular nature of the kit. Rather, we need to make things *more*  
modular (e.g. get the hardwired behavior out of the gnetlist front end).

>
> gEDA needs to be like that.  It needs to - at least at first - offer
> an easy and OBVIOUS workflow for the common users' needs.  The
> learning curve for doing basic stuff should be small.  If the user
> sticks to it, more options are available later.  Let them learn all
> those things as they're needed, not force them to learn it all up
> front.
>
>> They expect it to work like a hand tool.
>
> As a woodworker, I find this analogy inappropriate - hand tools
> require *much* more care and tuning than, say, power tools.

So run the analogy the other way if you wish. Someone who attempts to  
use a hand tool as if it is a power tool will be frustrated, but  
turning it into a power tool is not the answer.

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd@xxxxxxxxx




_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user