Re: gEDA-user: Power (and other non-graphical) pins

[John Doty <jpd@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 16, 2009, at 1:46 PM, Joerg wrote:

> Steve Meier wrote:
>> Do either of you think that one size shoe should fit all peoples  
>> feet?
>>
>
> No, but it seems this thread shows two different sizes. The rest would
> mostly be in between :-)

gEDA belongs to the software user's tradition, not to the software  
consumer's tradition. It cannot be made to conform to the consumer's  
tradition without destroying its flexibility. And there is no need:  
there are other packages (e.g. Eagle) for those who choose to be  
consumers.

>
>
>> The market place of jobs will have opportunities for specialists  
>> and for
>> generalists and for ranges in between.

Sure. gEDA is a generalist's tool. Look at the developers.

>>
>> The generalist will be at a disadvantage when faced with a task that
>> pushes state of the art for a specific field.

Absolutely not. The generalist has a huge advantage, because at the  
cutting edge there is no "specific field", only a problem to be  
solved. To truly push the state of the art almost always requires  
importing ideas from outside any "specific field", because the  
specialists have mastered *those*, and that's what defines the "state  
of the art".

Take an optical sensor from defense surveillance, understand the  
physics of how it will respond to x-rays, devise algorithms to sift  
the images for photon hits and extract their vital statistics using  
the limited computation capability on a spacecraft, mix in circuits  
from 1980's audio and 1950's radar, and make an imaging nondispersive  
x-ray spectrometer. Launch it, see doppler shifted lines from  
relativistic gas flows around a black hole.

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/asca/gallery/mcg6.html

Now *that* was pushing the state of the art. Working on pushing it  
some more...

>> The specialist tends to be
>> pressed when outside their area.
>>
>> How does this relate to geda? Feed back from specialists isn't bad  
>> but
>> they need to understand that their suggestions will be treated as
>> suggestions not as mandates.

I would wish that feedback could come from those who appreciate  
gEDA's strengths rather than deprecate them.

>> The coders will work on what interests
>> them, or what they get payed to work on, or maybe if they get some
>> thrill from being the one to provide some feature (or in DJ's case I
>> think he just can't help but be creative).
>>
>
> This depends on the gEDA goals. Ales wants to flesh those out some  
> more,
> he wrote. If, for example, the goal would be to some day provide a  
> very
> viable alternative to commercial stuff that engineers use today

I'd rather Ales looked to the future. His goal is to do better, not  
merely to copy the inflexibilities of existing packages. From where I  
sit, he's already succeeded.

There's a bunch of stuff in orbit that I designed with Viewlogic  
(another example of "commercial stuff that engineers use"). But gEDA  
is far more flexible and productive for me.

> then it
> might head into a similar direction as OpenOffice.

That's a backward-looking remake of a consumer software package. A  
better example for gEDA is TeX, a power tool for people who are  
serious about automating document production.

> It isn't quite there
> yet but it is close to what manistream business uses.

The "mainstream" is moving in the direction of doing more and more  
with software and ASICs. gEDA is a flexible, forward-looking tool for  
this kind of integration.

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




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