[News.eclipse.foundation] Re: E4 / SWT 4.0

[Mauro Molinari <mauro.molinari@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ed!

Ed Merks ha scritto:
> Such speedy service! :-P  I've often noticed that if I deal with 
> something in a speedy way, that the speed in and of itself will be 
> judged as either good or bad depending on whether the person liked what 
> I did.  If they don't like it, they consider the speed to make the bad 
> result even more offensive; if they did like it, they consider the speed 
> to make the good result even better.  So ask yourself, would you have 
> felt better if it took and hour, a day or a week?  If not, then it's not 
> the ten minutes that bothered you but the wontfix.

It was the combination of the "wontfix" and the ten minutes-only spent 
to get to that conclusion, because there were "no plans", without giving 
too much attention to what my request really was about.

> I wonder if at the time you wrote your report if you had a good sense of 
> exactly how big the wish list already was?  I know how frustrating it is 
> to watch a wish list grow faster than one can ever hope to shrink it...

I know, this is the key point and the challenge. But the "throw away 
that list and move on other directions" shouldn't be the right solution 
to the problem, IMHO.

> Many people will complain that Eclipse is too complex.  The solution is 
> always to simplify it by adding more features and capabilities.  But of 
> course having more ways to do something, also generates even more 
> complexity...  Perhaps a major aspect of the problem with huge web 
> application development is the underlying framework, JEE;  it's 
> difficult to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear.   OSGi is 
> certainly a far simpler container model.  I manage a workspace that 
> normally consists of  almost 200 projects with many millions of lines of 
> code.  OSGi's classpath management makes classpath setup a non-issue and 
> the applications always just run...

So, don't you think that if e4 could succeed to manage this complexity 
effectively it would be a very good result, without actually the need to 
jump to a Web 2.0 infrastructure or any other revolutionary new feature 
like that? :-)
Yes, I know you already answered to this question: "there will be 
Eclipse 3.5, 3.6, etc."... but if you say that the resources are lacking 
for e4, will they be enough to carry on both e4 and e3.x?

> That's just 3.5 or 3.6.  It's relative small incremental improvements on 
> what we have today.  The 3.x effort will continue and if the community 
> gets involved with that as well, we should expect to see a solid and 
> improved 3.x stream as well as an exciting innovative 4.x stream to lead 
> us into a long and bright future.

They are those "small incremental improvements" that frightens me. I 
mean, there are some improvements that may seem "small" to an end user 
point of view (although VERY valuable), but that are actually hard to 
implement. I think they are something in the middle between the 
"ordinary maintenance" and the "revolutionary new development"... I 
don't think some requested enhancements will ever go into 3.x if e4 is 
released without them... And meanwhile, the effort spent on e4 could 
have been spent to implement those enhancements...

> I often tell people, we don't have a shortage of good ideas, we have a 
> shortage of people who can turn the good ideas into actions and 
> results.  It's incredibly frustrating when good ideas can't be turned 
> into actions.  The more good ideas there are, the more frustrating it 
> is.   So yes, we appreciate your good ideas and we are frustrated by 
> them.  We even have our own good ideas that frustrate us...

I have no doubts about that! :-)

> > Sorry for the long post.
> It was a good one.  I hope nothing I've said makes you feel bad.  I know 

Not at all, don't worry! :-)
My post wasn't about complaining, but to express my point of view on 
this topic.

Cheers,
Mauro.