Re: A few questions: Libre SoC, website, Rust

[Richard Braun]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 11:10:53PM +0200, Almudena Garcia wrote:
> > I don't want to work with people who give up because it takes them
> > more than a few seconds to find information, or who evaluate a project
> > based on the look of its web site.
> This is a prejudice, in fact.

The definition of a prejudice includes "not being based on reason
or actual experience". That doesn't apply here.

> If we want to attract new users who can become contributors, we have to
> make the beginning and the initial steps as easy as we can.
> You talk about "a few seconds" to find information but, when you are a
> noob, these searches can take hours or even days, because you don't know
> what is the term to search.
> If the website is user-friendly, this type of "explorers" can quickly find
> all the information about this project, and even know new details that this
> person doesn't know about.

Again, you're mixing "beautiful" and "useful". In any big code base, it's
perfectly normal for a newcomer to spend hours or even days looking for
obscure pieces of information without an interactive way to get your answer
(think mailing list or mentor). Anyone who expects things to happen more
quickly and gives up is very likely not willing to make the proper effort
to get things right in their code afterwards.

> If the website looks "modern" (not necessarily following the latest hype,
> simply "elegant"), this explorer will think that the project is in active
> development and It feels attracted to continue researching about this.
> If the website looks ugly and old, the explorer will think that the project
> is mostly dead, and doesn't take the effort to continue the research.

Tell me the state of the Hurd project again ? I think the web site is
pretty honest about that. If I were a newcomer looking at a "beautiful"
web site, whatever that would be, and found an old code base with roughly
one serious maintainer and a few contributors here and there, I'd get to
think the project is vaporware with good marketing and feel pretty cheated,
and may not want to go on further either.

> We have to leave the 90s ideas, and think as younger people thinks nowadays
> (It don't refers to think as a teenager, simply remove elitists ideas and
> prejudices about "who merit work in this project")

I don't see why the "90s ideas", whatever you're referring to, must be
abandoned. I don't see why "we" should adapt to how younger people think,
especially considering how many I know do think (or, really, don't).
I do claim to be an elitist for a project such as the Hurd, in so far as
I am convinced that the project failed in no small part because the initial
code was written by someone who just wasn't good enough for the task,
unlike a project like, say, Linux. Finally, it's not about merit, it's
about who can make the project progress well and who can't. I claim that,
for the most part, people who are not willing to make serious efforts
should just stay away. The Hurd is already buggy enough as it is and
this is not a school.

-- 
Richard Braun