Re: [NTLK] might give up on newton

Ryan,

> Sure, Steve pulled the plug, but nobody said anyone
> was going to get rich off writing Newton software.
> And if people are frustrated because the plug was
> pulled, take it out on Steve, not the consumers.

The uncomfortable reality is that developing and maintaining good
software is not that much of an amusement, especially for those of us
who do it professionally. It's certainly no hobby for me.

Just to go back and recreate the whole Newton development
environment, get familiar with the tools again and all their little
foibles, root out all the documentation, have a development Newt and
Mac/PC handy with the right specs and dig out the files, work out
what is what, read the notes you made at the the time, make sure you
have the right build - it's very time consuming.

For even a small package, it takes months of learning, writing and
testing to get something out there of good quality. Taking and
understanding someone elses code has to be one of the hardest things
one can do and while I have hoped to work on some of the packages for
which I have the source code, the time required means other, current
things have to get chopped - so it's not going to happen. Those who
are persisting with Newton development are, as I have said before,
heroic.

Probably the result of all this work is that three people download
the package and one of them moans that there is this that or the
other lack or restriction, no one develops it and you don't get paid.

I would make this suggestion. Before posting that Newton developers
are shirking their responsibilities to the community, people should
go and build a package of their own, no matter how simple. A "hello
world" app. that installs, works and cleans up after itself would be
good enough. Get some skin in the game and then think about the
situation from that perspective and how developers could be
incentivised to make it happen. Maybe someone comes up with an idea
that might work.

I understand the frustration, to some extent I share it, but there is
plenty of Newton software already out there to do many of the things
we want and to create a configuration that is productive in the
context of what a Newton can be in today's environment. Those
packages that require registration and where the original developer
cannot be reached - we'll that's tough, personal computing is all
about waste, short term advantage and pretty much never about
consolidation, longevity or security.

Joel.

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Received on Sun May 18 06:41:16 2008