eltoyoboyo's Journal: Spray on Usability

This article appeared on Slashdot on 4/2/04: "John Gruber of Daring Fireball has written a long and considered riposte to Eric Raymond's recent lament concerning the poor quality of user interfaces in free software. The core of his argument is that 'developing software with a good UI requires both aptitude and a lot of hard work.' "

This topic of "Open Source Sucks/Closed Source Sucks" seems to be the #1 topic of conversation in ANY Slashdot article. It seems to be a political and religious struggle. Any self respecting nerd would do well to stay away and just peek in now and again so see how the stew is cooking. Otherwise it is quite tiresome and makes it difficult to wade through other interesting comments. Much of the good stuff is moderated out in the same vein as the "first post" crap and all that is left is Mandrake vs Debian vs FreeBSD. Or Gnome vs KDE. Or ObscureWeirdName 0.2 vs Wayoutthereapp 0.1.2.

Here is how to get punished on Slashdot: Dare to speak the truth on the shortcomings of any open source project. You will find yourself metamoderated down by some freshmeat 0.0.0.x project contributor with a chip on his shoulder.

John makes an excellent point, which I agree with 100% "Talented programmers who work long full-time hours crafting software need to be paid." We will see whether that paid talent comes from Russia, China, or India in the long run.