EOL extension

[Mark Hammond]

On 30/11/2009 10:42 PM, Martin Geisler wrote:
> Mark Hammond<mhammond at skippinet.com.au>  writes:

>> Being "easier than subversion" is an excellent goal, but we shouldn't
>> let a good assertion get in the way of actual experience ;) In this
>> particular case, that one developer who knows the pattern list needs
>> to be updated may not be the same developer who adds the new file.
>
> Is that a big problem? I don't think it is if we make it easy to correct
> mistakes.
>
> I think we should aim for a simple mechanism that get's it right 99% of
> the time. Simplicity is important here in order to make it easy to
> correct mistakes.

Where has the 99% come from?  Wherever it came from, it is still less 
than the 100% subversion has been offering.  I can't recall when I have 
ever had to fix such a mistake created by subversion.

I've a concern that this is justified as sounding good *in theory* - 
much like win32text sounded good *in theory*.  Using something which is 
actually proven as a model seems to offer the best chance of success, 
particularly if the people designing the model aren't actually part of 
the target user-base.  Assertions such as "99%", "better than", "easier 
than" etc all sound like falling into the same trap.

Recall the huge amount of energy which went into explaining why 
win32text didn't work in practice.  Many people simply could not get 
past the fact they thought it *should* work fine and without any 
experience to prove otherwise, communicating this fact was very 
difficult and tedious.  I was hoping to inject some real experience into 
the discussion to ensure the same problem doesn't also happen in this 
case.  That seems to be distracting more than it is helping - as do all 
my attempts at helping with this - so I'm happy to leave you guys to it 
and once some real Windows developers start making noise that it does 
indeed work, I'll look forward to becoming yet another happy user.

Cheers,

Mark