Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Barriers to Adoption: exponential userbase size increases

[Dustin Sallings]

On Oct 18, 2004, at 9:51, Thomas Lord wrote:

> What if the opposite of "deferring to a tiny installed base" turns out
> to be equivalent to "screwing up the tool so badly that the benefit of
> adopting it is lost?"

	Could it be true that the benefit of adopting arch is the fact that it 
uses shell meta characters in some of its filenames that cause 
confusion for some users?

	It's one thing to hold on to design decisions that make arch a 
reliable revision control system (i.e. immutable archives), but it's 
another to hold onto things that are annoying enough that don't have 
any technical justification, but keep a fairly steady stream of 
complaints from users (or potential users, or people who refuse to be 
users because of them).

> Anyway: Arch isn't deferring to any tiny installed base.  It's just
> sticking to what makes the most sense to me.  And it's installed base
> keeps growing, afaict, so I can't be *all* wrong.

	Nobody said you're all wrong, but certain decisions do make the tool 
more difficult to use for people who have development environments that 
differ from yours.

> Some people run smack into arch as newbies, experience great
> frustration, then emerge as better unix users and better hackers
> generally.  One small part of that, when it happens, is a shift of
> perspective about the various issues that get discussed endlessly on
> this list.  So, what exactly is it I'm supposed to fix about this?

	Perhaps you should stop thinking of arch as a UNIX education tool.  
Sure, it broadened a bit of my understanding, but only in the ways it 
differs from other tools I use.  The more seamlessly it fits into 
development practices, etc... the easier it is to use.  The more things 
it does that, at the least, distracts the user from what he's actually 
trying to do, the more difficult it becomes to get to the parts you 
really want (benefit of adoption).

--
Dustin Sallings