"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:04:53 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in
message
news
Have you tried Xnews at all? I'm not a geek, so I don't really get
into tweaking news readers, but my two youngest love it and can make
it do some fancy tricks.

We shouldn't have to fiddle that much to make software work correctly.
Proper requirements gathering and design are supposed to take care of
these
things, but that process is sadly lacking from most open source projects,
as
well as quite a few shareware/commercial products. Say what you will
about
Microsoft, but in terms of what they do BEFORE the coding begins, their
process is almost perfect.

I sort of agree with you on that. However, what techheads might think
of as being a good idea, isn't always a good idea. What techheads
might think of as perfectly comprehensible and/or intuitive is
gibberish to a user. And that is the real problem with open source
because you have the same technoids messing around with what should be
a simple concept and all have differing ideas about how stuff should
work.

In a correctly ordered software project, the processes I described are not
done by tech heads. As you said, this usually spells disaster. Requirements
gathering is a dialog between designers and the intended user population,
with programmers left OUT of the loop for the time being. Ideally, designers
are people who know what the programmers are capable of, but that's the
extent of their involvement with programming.

Mozilla is a perfect example of a train wreck. There was NO requirements
gathering whatsoever. A year ago, open source participants were telling
newsgroup visitors that Mozilla was not intended to be a finished product
for general users. Rather, it was supposed to be a demonstration of the
underlying coding technology, which they've named "Gecko". Who it was a demo
for, nobody can really say. Perhaps they wanted to sell it as embedded
technology, for cell phones and such. When users complained about all the
horrors built into the product, the usual response was "It's open source. If
you don't like something, you're welcome to contribute some code". The
ultimate tech head private club. What if you happen to be an English
teacher, not a programmer?

Now, however, they've backtracked and they're listening to user
requirements. Unfortunately, the monster is already walking around, burping
and farting. Hey Harry...try this with Mozilla: Hit CTRL-B to open your
bookmark file. Hit CTRL-F, and enter something that you know it'll find
within your collection. When it finds the bookmark(s), what's wrong with the
way the result is presented?

It's also a somewhat concept becuase it is "open source" only to those
who understand the coding structure - thus the end results will be the
same.

Exactly, but worse: Many of the contributors to BIG open source projects are
children. Literally. Teenagers who think it's cool to see their defective
code included in something famous. But, they never got the message about
gathering requirements first.


I don't know if you enjoy computer books or not, but the bible of user
interface design is quite fascinating. It's called "About Face 2.0: The
Essentials of Interaction Design", by Alan Cooper. When you're done with
it,
you'll know exactly which software authors belong in hell for all
eternity.

I'll look it up - thanks for the tip.

The above book is a good read for users, or people involved in software
construction. Cooper was responsible for the design of Visual Basic, but he
still takes plenty of pot shots at his old employer. It makes the book fun.
Here's another that would probably put most users right to sleep, but it's a
classic:
"Exploring Requirements - Quality Before Design", by Donald C. Gause &
Gerald M. Weinberg. It's a $44.00 textbook, but many libraries have it,
usually covered with dust. It's a real eye-opener because it makes it quite
clear which software firms missed the boat entirely.