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Re: [Gnumed-devel] simple vs. sophisticated


From: Sebastian Hilbert
Subject: Re: [Gnumed-devel] simple vs. sophisticated
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 12:43:35 +0200
User-agent: KMail/1.7

On Friday 03 September 2004 11:54, Richard Terry wrote:
> You hit the nail of the head. Dead right - our brains are very different -
> you are left brained - logical - stepa>step b, I am right brained - hence I
> ***struggle*** with computer logic. Still can't read man pages etc
>
> I get continually peed of with linux because of its illogical
> functionality. The file save dialogs being a classic example. Even the
> newer ones, though looking superficially like the microsoft controls, lack
> some of the essential microsoft funcitonality (like hitting a letter and
> having the directories slide across to the directories starting with that
> letter).
Oh man. This is great. I didn't know this feature even existed. Mainly because 
I never thought of it. BTW. Open dialog in KDE have that feature. I just 
tried it.

I see a problem here. If the human brain tries to come up with a good solution 
to problem it often succeeds. But as this is rarely documented (not even the 
obvious features) I will never know it is there. 
>
> The frustration for me and many others is that we want gnuMed up and
> running - and politically, at least in AU, one can envisage a situation
> were an unsatisfactory solution is imposed upon us by state legislation and
> needs. There have been many attempts to help gnuMed (remember our
> conference last year I think), offers and suggestions around project
> management, and these have come to nothing.
Much like our brains (seem to) work uniquely so are our views on Gnumed's 
future. Let me elaborate on this. MOst of it is pretty obvious to all of us 
but it needs to be discussed.

1.) Group A needs/wants Gnumed *now* or *soon*
Group B want Gnumed as well but wants it to be better than what we have today

2.) Group A can think of ways on how to speed up Gnumed development but cares 
little about the future drawbacks these decision inherit.
Group B designs carefully but painfully slow ( regarding Group A's 
expectations)

3.) Group A gets pissed of because of no visible progress (usually a cpuple 
weeks attention span)
Group B moves on

What can you do about it ?
Group A could a) return later b) support group B c) become a member of group B

Group B could a) listen to group A and do what they want (producing yet 
another crap program) b) leave the project c) continue

rule 1) the programmer is always right. So if the majority of hackers is in 
groups A than Gnumed will automatically (not per decision) follow their goals

If however Gnumed hackers are more B-type hackers Gnumed will continue the way 
it is.
 
What other possibilities are there ?
Well stop whining and start a company. Take a risk (loosing friends , family 
and money). You are the boss. You can give directions. Hire programmers. Tell 
them what to do. Depending on *your* abilities *your* Gnumed derivative will 
be ready sooner or later.

If you are still reading and considering this I can tell you Karsten and I 
have been contaced by two orthree companies before. They told about the 
promised land and have never been sighted afterwards. 

So you can make a difference. 

Or start a non-profit organization. Tell all the doctors who constantly 
complain about ther prog to help funding an alternative besides receiving tax 
cuts. Juding by the continued interest from all sides you will be flooded 
with money enabling you to hire some fine coders.

Well I will still be around in six months. Let's see what has happend until 
then.

BTW this post is in no way intended to piss of Richard !!!
>
> Despite what you say about gui-designers - I found using VB + visual
> designers in access - that it speeded up my work.
>
> I could write VB code from top down - writing multiple routines in
> parallel, so they all came together at once. My VB Client, despite its crap
> code was written in about 6 months of my spare time  and has been in
> constant use since 1998 on a daily basis. The database has hundreds of
> tables and hundreds of queries,  yet even over that time is only about 34MB
> in size. My contact manager I wrote for the HUDGP many years ago is used in
> real life situations by dozens of people of a daily basis. When I gave them
> the beta of this they found 4 bugs - that's all. So visual design does work
> for some people. I acknowledge none of my stuff is sophisticated -but at
> least it is working in the real world.  Though you dislike me designs - the
> doctors who used my script writer in division projects bemoaned the fact
> that I took it away from them and wouldn't support it - and groan about the
> functionally crap software (MDW) that they use today.
You have a point. This still doesn't solve our problem. It merely means that 
your program serves its purpose well in its context. Are you sure that this 
program would serve its purpose here in Germany or any other place. I am not 
questioning your design. Let's not forget that a rewrite of Gnumed can be 
much more painfull than having to wait.
>
> With your progamming talents gnuMed could be buzzing.
I can see the promised land (just kidding)
>
BTW. I don't understand half of what all of you are talking about.
One final word. As long as most CVS commits seem to be coming in from backend 
people and group B people Gnumed will naturally follow this directions. What 
do you expect of a bunch of free time coders :-) Not much can be done about 
that.
-- 
Sebastian Hilbert 
Leipzig / Germany
[www.openmed.org]  -> PGP welcome, HTML ->/dev/null
ICQ: 86 07 67 86   -> No files, no URL's
VoIP: callto://address@hidden
My OS: Suse Linux. Geek by Nature, Linux by Choice




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