[lug] Re: recycling code [WAS Fwd: NICHOLAS PETRELEY: "The Open Source" ]

[Matt Clauson]

On Wednesday 21 March 2001 21:17, you wrote:
> >of catching up to do, and with so many people re-inventing the wheel (5 or
> > 6
>
> While I mostly agree with that opinion about KDE/QT, (I use QT to write
> apps), I think that its fine to have 5 or 6 mail clients. The more the
> merrier, I say. Geezz, if reinventing the wheel is a problem, we'd all be
> using pine, and UDE. Choice is what makes linux a wonderful thing, for me.
> I find myself flip-flopping between, kde, gnome, window maker, icewm, and
> blackbox, depending on my mood, or what I need to get done.
> Whatever happened to Enlightenment? I haven't heard much about it lately.

The more, the merrier, yes...  But do you have to code the damned thing from 
the ground up?  We're writing software that OTHERS CAN DOWNLOAD THE SOURCE 
CODE FROM, PEOPLE!  Why do we have to write 10 million different routines to 
interface with POP3, IMAP, and SMTP when it's already been written, instead 
of concentrating on *USEFUL* features? (I like the multiple personality 
feature in Kmail -- helps me keep a lot of my mail straight.  Too bad it 
doesn't support IMAP yet -- would be great to interface it with the local 
Exchange server.)

People are concentrating on stuff that they can rip the code for from other 
projects, instead of actually making progress in a good user interface, or 
more advanced useful features, yadda yadda yadda...  There aren't any 
decently usable mailreaders that have passed the 1.0 milestone in Gnome, 
IMHO.  Evolution is a mess.  Balsa ain't much better.  And they're supposed 
to be 'leading the pack'!  RIDICULOUS.

I can look at the code for one of these, rip out the IMAP stuff, and have a 
patch slapped together for Kmail in probably a couple of hours.  I'll have a 
good looking, HIGHLY FUNCTIONAL, low-bug-content mailreader...  That I can 
put in front of the Idiots in my tech support pool and not have to worry 
about the stupid user error I'd get by slapping a copy of Mutt in front of 
them!

Or, to shorten this rant:  Good grief!  We're writing code that we're making 
pretty much public for reuse, people!  Start recycling your code instead of 
wasting time building it from scratch for the 20th time!  If you see a cool 
feature in Balsa that you want in Kmail, USE THE CODE!  If you want to write 
better functionality for your Palm under Mac, and you can write the code for 
it, browse the source of Jpilot!

We've got ESR's bazaar right in front of us, people...  But everyone's making 
their own wares, and not buying anyone else's.  Notice something wrong with 
this picture?