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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: feedback; bug reports
From:       James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj () acm ! org>
Date:       2007-11-14 7:38:43
Message-ID: 473AA603.30706 () acm ! org
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David Jarvie wrote:
> On Saturday 10 November 2007 20:55:36 James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>> David Faure wrote:
>>> On Thursday 08 November 2007, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>>>>> If you don't want two modes, you are free to use only one of them for
>>>>>  everything.
>>>> Actually, I can't do this because of the fact that these two modes are
>>>> in the code.  This is a poor design.
>>> Thanks for the kind words,
>> Nothing kind or unkind intended by an objective statement about how to
>> best design things.  As long as developers have too much ego invested in
>> their code, this makes it difficult to improve it.
> 
> But it isn't _necessary_ to be so blunt about things, and to word it as if 
> your opinion cannot be questioned. It's _your_opinion_ that it's poor design, 
> not necessarily an objective fact. Even if you're right about it, it could 
> easily be said in a kinder way. one doesn't have to have a lot of ego 
> invested in something to be upset by this way of saying things.
> 
Actually, it isn't my opinion but rather what I was taught in 
engineering school.

Yes, I put it very bluntly, but I don't see how to say it in a kinder 
way; is there a kinder word than 'poor'?  Mixing configuration data with 
code is a poor design practice.  If you doubt that this is correct, 
please do your own research on the subject.

I am starting to feel as though I need to apologize for going to 
engineering school and studying EE & CS.  I figure that my instructors 
and the text books used were correct and I can pass this knowledge along 
unless people think that what is taught in software engineering courses 
in college had no validity and that they must learn it themselves by 
trial and error.  There is a large body of knowledge on the subject and 
it seems foolish to ignore it. I would hope that KDE developers have 
read several books on programing and would already know that what I said 
is true.

Note that books on a language are not what I mean by books on programing 
-- knowing a computer language is necessary, but not sufficient to know 
how to write good programs.  This is also something which I was taught 
in college.

-- 
JRT



 
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