I’d rather do pair programming. That’s also a constant code review, and very taxing. But you have a second opinion related to business context and user requirements, you transfer knowledge effectively and thus avoid building silos, and you get to hang out with another human at the same time.
But that kind of added value is intangible for managers in the short term.
At some point it will be simpler to start from scratch again than adding a new label.
However, it’s hardly surprising that a crappy codebase is hard to maintain.
“It’s simple to code” assumes the existence of experienced developers familiar with the code base, and that the code base is well-maintained.
This should be the rule, however it is not. Are we engaging in an extended discussion of how ignorant it is to assume that things are done in a proper way here?
I can see where I would place the modulation matrix for each track on the Syntakt but I guess the UI is the least problematic thing there
Indeed. But the decision if to start again from scratch is most often not the development team decision and it has to be justified. Sometimes a partial re-write may do the trick but it is still kind of expensive project considering the time, money and risks
The topic was started entirely because of people asserting “it should be simple to code” with no idea of all the pre-conditions for that to be true. Including the relative quality of the processes in the development team.
I thought it was amusing to bring the discussion back to that. I know I’ve seen statements like “I can see a space for it in the UI, so it must be easy to do”. Like available space in the UI was the only consideration.
Thank you, I have written and deleted posts like this and your follow-ups multiple times since DT2 was launched, truly a frustrating experience.
Yes they can be fun! Until the person repeatedly insists over and over again that this feature is a “dealbreaker” (a word I would love to never hear again) and then spends the thread saying “Electribe had it and the fanboys aren’t going to stop me it’s 202x” which is not a real argument and has no follow up (and we’re always sycophantic fanboys when we’ve had enough of the whining) - and it can happen on any thread even though there are specific feature request threads - keep it there (edit: removed some unnecessary snark).
PS: I don’t code but work with programmers to fix supply chain issues at a large company and am going through one of these “it should be easy” situations which is so complicated and difficult (maybe the biggest disparity between the 2 I’ve seen in 20 years) so again thanks to everyone for being a voice of sanity on the board.
And this thread mostly focuses on the technical implementation part. Sometimes it’s in fact simple, but the organisational issues make it hard.
Many years ago I did some consulting for a bank. I developed a simple module that provided some financial info for costumers of that bank, when they were logged in to their home banking site. Somehow, either the designer or me made a mistake and a button was the wrong colour, and therefore not according to the financial institution’s brand standards. We had to change it. It was a simple change, just the hex code in the css. No big deal.
But as this was code that would be loaded into the costumer’s home banking page, the security vetting process took almost two months!
Of course, this is an extreme example, and things are hopefully not as bad for a synth or whatever music gizmo.
But the reality is no one asking for a feature has any knowledge of the development internal process. What regression testing is done. How are features prioritised. How is the firmware release process organised.
So even if from a technical perspective it can in fact be simple, we don’t really know how “easy” anything is really.
Software dev / tech lead of 20+ years here. Rant over now, but this topic it really grinds my gears, as you may understand.
Yes I know this. I’m being lazy about my complaints for brevity’s sake
Never ever let the limits of reality get in the way of someone’s boundless expectation!
Right, you are seen as a “gatekeeper” to their dreams, everyone who has to account for time budget and diverging priorities from the same requestor.
Again, this isn’t responding to desire or legitimate criticism, it’s sort of dancing around the toxic “crab buckets” that develop around any Internet community but especially creative communities where people displace their need to be seen and validated for their works into needing their complaints and excuses validated and resonated.
If they can’t connect on creation, they can further bond on these excuses and justify not trying when everything is so stacked against them.
Outside of music, you’ll see the people who don’t want to hear from artists who’ve spent their lives working on technique, most every day with no glory for that, the complainant just sees that some people are “naturally gifted” in a way that they see that so and so device has this feature, but they won’t use that device because it doesn’t have another feature, etc etc.
I’m sure it annoys many of us because we have the self-awareness to know how we operate, but with less externalization of the negativity or needing to engage on and validate the excuses.
Similar to the “joy of missing out” I’m always happy to hear that someone likes and uses something that doesn’t gel with me. There’s some internal struggle over how much time I give to not-great UI, but I’m not going to argue with people who can look past that and get shit done. People who like what I don’t also provide exit liquidity from my inability to relax into a workflow, after all
If ”this should be easy” and ”this is an obvious flaw/deal breaker” had any grain of truth in them, the thing they’re pointing at wouldn’t be there to gripe about in the first place
Humility is so important in a time when the internet is structured around compulsive, solipsistic discourse. Where a lack of echoing someone’s ungrounded expectation and disappointment at not being personally catered to is treated as stifling their free speech.
I think people more likely to be solo artists, not work with a group or partner can fall into this when they’re doing all the creative load. More things to learn, more instruments to learn, more aspects of production to distract and the entire load with figuring out the output and marketing and images and and and
Anyway, I like talking through it because I know I’m not immune to these anti patterns and while I don’t rant about vendors online too much, I think about what I buy and why and try to be mindful and conscious and also patient in ways that I have a harder time when people are taking a thread about technical needs and learning an instrument and just shitting all over it with fantasy derails
It’s a trait that I want to be good at so many things that fascinate me, and that semi-blessing, semi-curse leads to a lack of total focus and proficiency that leaves me more busy in the non-creative aspects over head-down expression and sharing and networking that would get me more involved with others…
I have no idea if it’s easy to code or not, but I’ve wondered for years why so few samplers have portamento or glide when it used to be fairly standard.
Yeah i was gonna reply that. And variables changing value and meaning over the course of those 2000 lines. And switches, nested ifs, so many for and while loops
