Re: Need for launchpad
On Sunday 08 January 2006 10:39, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 07:49:33PM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:02:09AM +0100, Stephan Hermann wrote:
> > > On Sunday 08 January 2006 07:27, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Jan 06, 2006 at 03:19:42PM -0500, Frans Jessop wrote:
> > > > > Ubuntu's launchpad is amazing. Do you think it would be helpful if
> > > > > all DD's worked through it on their projects? Wouldn't that keep
> > > > > things more organized and efficient? Or perhaps Debian could build
> > > > > its own version of launchpad which is better. Again, I think it
> > > > > would do a good job keeping everything organized an efficient.
> > > >
> > > > The day when working on Debian requires the use of a web interface
> > > > will be the day that I hunt down and painfully kill the person
> > > > responsible for doing it.
> > >
> > > Luckily that the bts of Launchpad has a mailinterface..which is quite
> > > nice. So some other parts will have mailinterfaces as well, and some
> > > other goodies where someone can attach some nice cli tools.
> >
> > Which nobody except the Blessed Few (being those who have signed the NDA
> > allowing them access to the Launchpad code) can modify or enhance.
>
> And even then have uncertain chances of getting it deployed into a
> place where it's useful, and goodness knows how practical it would be
> to do this anyway - the backend limitations could be anything.
Sure, but this applies to any software, actually the best example is the
kernel. If there wouldn't be anything restrictive, well, we would swim in
closed source drivers from hardware manufactures for their shiny hardware,
and everybody would be happy and dancing.
But this is not the real world. And we know this world, because we created
them.
> You can't normally design real APIs onto production software and get
> anything but a mess, you have to engage in sound engineering from the
> start.
Well, if anyone ever created and API from scratch which was good and working,
I think he would be now a rich man. Well, MS is, but the API is polished with
every release.
>
> > > > Removing the ability to manage things from the shell would not be
> > > > more organised and efficient unless you're a complete fricking moron
> > > > who can't operate a unix host. Which appears to be the target
> > > > audience of launchpad.
> > >
> > > Well, I'm happy to see, that a lot of people are not thinking like you.
> > > They see launchpad as a collaborative worktool.
> >
> > Your comment doesn't follow from what Andrew said.
>
> Indeed, it appears to demonstrate a complete absence of having
> understood the paragraph it is in reply to, or perhaps even having
> read it.
I commented this in my reply to Matthew.
> > > Finally, are you not able to use lynx?
> >
> > I know your smarter than that. Pressing the down-arrow 50 times to reach
> > an action button takes a lot longer than typing a quick command to invoke
> > that same action, and we both know it.
>
> And more to the point, is almost completely immune to scripting. Which
> is the ultimate problem with most of these things. I don't think
> Debian would even be here today if random people couldn't throw
> together stuff they wanted to see done on top of the stuff we already
> have; that's how most of our current infrastructure was created.
As I said, it's a matter of the working behaviour. I'm almost faster with the
keyboard even on UIs then with the mouse or touchpad, but it doesn't mean,
that others are fast as well.
People who can use the CLI are blessed, but leaving the others behind? No,
elite thinking was yesterday, today is, how we can gather more people around
a project, to work on. the more people we can gather, the faster we will
accomplish goals.
Therefore, a lot of people never learned the advantages of cli, and more
people don't want to learn them. Why? I don't know, and it doesn't matter.
But, even those people we have to reach with an easy to use interface, and if
this means: webapplications, so be it. It doesn't mean, that I or you have to
use it, but thousands of other people can use it, and they're quite good in
using a simple webbrowser.
> Unix tools should do one thing well and let another tool do the next
> thing. That's how we've come this far. It's also a statement of some
> elementary engineering principles. It always amazes me how eager
> people are to abandon these concepts in favour of some grand
> integrated white elephant that's all CSS and no trousers.
Blame Xerox Star. Without the invention of the mouse and without the Xerox
Software, we wouldn't have this discussion :) We would haved stayed with a
simple wired terminal based MP/M. As I said in the beginning, the world's
changed, and we have to focus on people, who haven't the advantage of the
good old school of using an OS on the console.
regards,
\sh
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