4 ms·

Try to compare commercial support, 99% of the time crappy and utterly slow vs community support and you'll get the answer. Even hyper-expensive commercial softw

by kkfx 4y ago

Try to compare commercial support, 99% of the time crappy and utterly slow vs community support and you'll get the answer. Even hyper-expensive commercial software have terrible support. Most FLOSS devs acts far better. Surely without formal legal guarantees.

nine_k 4y ago
While I can agree in many cases (YMMV), the point is that there still need to be expert cooks, and pretty few of them cook a particular piece of software right. Very unlike NYT plum pie recipe which exists as common knowledge and which even I can cook adequately.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Sure, but this is another problem: we need a common culture in IT, with specialists of that field that are missed because most schools of any degree do not form them being tied to some specific corporate and political interests. Let's say we have a widespread classic desktop system, we start learning it when we start using a desktop computer in the childhood, when we arrive at the high school most already know it a bit, not differently by those who start driving cars: they do not really start from sketch. After university some will know some aspects, some others some other aspects but in general the current common social brain is known enough by most to be mastered enough by most. At that point a CAD user do know how to fix certain CAD issues and who to ask if he/she can't because at that point IT is a common knowledge enough. Instead if we keep up the refrain "just learn to click around and there you go, no need to study more" we end up in present impasse where in most professions, not just IT, there is a so deep lack of competence that anything fall apart because even those who know a bit can't act lacking tools to act. We can't design of course a really perfect system, there always be issues, but we can and should try to tend to. Aiming high to still collect something good.

by kkfx 4y ago

nine_k 4y ago

While I can agree in many cases (YMMV), the point is that there still need to be expert cooks, and pretty few of them cook a particular piece of software right. Very unlike NYT plum pie recipe which exists as common knowledge and which even I can cook adequately.

kkfx 4y ago
Sure, but this is another problem: we need a common culture in IT, with specialists of that field that are missed because most schools of any degree do not form them being tied to some specific corporate and political interests. Let's say we have a widespread classic desktop system, we start learning it when we start using a desktop computer in the childhood, when we arrive at the high school most already know it a bit, not differently by those who start driving cars: they do not really start from sketch. After university some will know some aspects, some others some other aspects but in general the current common social brain is known enough by most to be mastered enough by most. At that point a CAD user do know how to fix certain CAD issues and who to ask if he/she can't because at that point IT is a common knowledge enough. Instead if we keep up the refrain "just learn to click around and there you go, no need to study more" we end up in present impasse where in most professions, not just IT, there is a so deep lack of competence that anything fall apart because even those who know a bit can't act lacking tools to act. We can't design of course a really perfect system, there always be issues, but we can and should try to tend to. Aiming high to still collect something good.