[MUD-Dev] To flame or not to flame (was: Usability and ...)

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <34294a54.17974168 at relay.mnsinc.com>, on 09/23/97 
   at 08:46 AM, caliban at darklock.com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock) said:

>I don't expect anyone to look at the sorts of things I'm suggesting
>and go "Gee! I did that wrong! I'll go fix it!"... I mean, if anyone
>*does* look at what I'm saying and go 'oops', I figure they'll just
>silently sneak off and fix it or decide it isn't worth the trouble.
>Where the things I bring up really have application is in the
>planning process, before you've written much in the way of code.
>Consequently, while it would be a serious pain in the patoot to hack
>into an in-development server, I think there are probably some people
>on this list who either aren't really working on a server yet or are
>just getting started; these people, I think, could benefit from
>consideration (not necessarily implementation) of some of those
>suggestions. 

I know that in at least 5 seperate cases discussions on this list were
responsible for different members scrapping or rewriting large parts
of their current server project.  I've done it more than once. 
Effectively I'm now scrapping almost my entire server based on
discussion on this list as I want to be able to implement ideas my old
model was incapable of supporting.  Nathan has commented similarly (I
think we were responsible for 3 compleat rewrites he said once?) on
this list, as also has AlexO.

In games like this the idea can be a lot more important than the code. 
However, as Raph said, ideas are cheap, its implementation (ie design)
that's expensive.  Create an idea, support it with design...

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...