Saturday, November 26, 2011

Developer with too many privileges.

The forums are getting totally out of hand at times.
If you look at the thread in Developer Chat regarding updateing the StringRegExp GUI you will see that it is now locked.  That comes from someone who has recently become a Developer.  Unfortunatly that also gives said person Moderator priveledges.  It was locked simply because I answered that I wouldn't be doing any changes to it.  That reply was in response to the question in this thread.
http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/134937-improvements-for-stringregexpgui/page__view__findpost__p__942231
It had nothing to do at all with the person who locked it.  Now we have a Developer who gets into a huff and decides that the RegEx GUI will not be part of the next release.  While I personally don't think it should be part of the AutoIt install that does not mean that everyone will feel the same way.  That was a personal statement and was placed in the post as a reason that I wouldn't be working on that code at all.  In my opinion, that old GUI needs too much work to bring it up to what is really needed for an effective tool.  That is one that will test everything properly and be easy for beginners to use.
While it is no major loss since there are a few other scripts/apps that do the job and do it better in my opinion that is no reason for the attitude shown in the last post of the thread.

Several of the recent developments both in the forums and in AutoIt itself already have me considering whether or not I should even continue with updating AutoIt as new versions become available.  Again this is personal.  I know that others think that functionality should continually be expanded but as far as I'm concerned it has already far surpassed it's primary goals.  Do we need all of the extras?  That depends on what you are using AutoIt for.  I don't.  If the Developers want to go down this road then perhaps it's time for them to start working on AutoIt4.  That way they won't be breaking any existing code because it won't be compatable at all anyway.  They will also have the advantage of being able to restart with well written code based on experience instead of constantly having to either modify base code (that's taking a chance) or having to use clumsy workarounds because of the short comings of the current base.  By the Developers own admission, if they had to do it all over again, the base code would not be the mess it is now.  Take all the GUI code as an example.  The primary developer doesn't want to touch it because of the mess it's in.  That being the case, starting from scratch would seem reasonable.  Throw the old code out the Window.
AutoIt3 is in no way compatable with AutoIt2 so why would anyone worry about  AutoIt4 being compatable with AutoIt3?  There is no need for that and new goals can be set at the time development is started so they know what will have to be done.  Take the new COM code as an example.  It broke a lot of UDF's which had to be fixed.  As far as I remember I only have one UDF using COM at all so it's no big deal.  I don't use or support that UDF anymore so I'll just remove it from my site.
Speaking of my AutoIt site(s) stay tuned for major changes.  The way I'm looking at it right now is this.
My AutoIt online help site will be taken down and temporarily replaced with a re-direct to the official online help site so you won't have the navigation abilities any longer.  That will probably happen within the next couple of days.  The main AutoIt site will undergo major changes.  All that will remain is a list of links to the actual script files and any compiled apps including the PCRE Toolkit.

I still don't have enough time for much forum activity (see the previous post on this blog) and I think with the way things are going right now there is a good chance that I won't be bothered even signing in for much longer.  I have too many things on the go to be worrying about other peoples attitudes and whether or not I might be stepping on thier toes.
Remove a Developers moderator priveledges and I might reconsider, remove the developer and I will probably reconsider.  For now that's all I intend to say about the subject.
Feel free to comment; you won't hurt my feelings at all and it won't change my feelings towards you if I have any.  Here, unlike the AutoIt forums we do have freedom of speech and I'm always willing to listen to a reasonable argument.