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doing vs. talking


From: Jakob Ilves [mailto:illvilja@yahoo.com]
>
> Seriously, you appear to be very focused and ambitious which
> is good. That's the attitude I have
> towards software development (mine and others) when I'm at
> work.  However, when I get into the
> Xconq world, I don't want to "get to work" again.  I don't
> want that "life and death" kind of
> attitude towards software development which I have at my job,
> I want to have a software project I
> can have a relaxed attitude to.  And therefore, I don't take
> Xconq _THAT_ serious and I think many
> other people on the list feels the same.

I'm sure they do.  But after a time it becomes difficult to distinguish
Doers from Talkers.  Are there 10 people working on Xconq, or 3?

I'm also coming from a newsgroup discussion culture that's more slanted
towards commercial than hobbyist development.  comp.games.development.*
certainly has all kinds, but the dominant ethic is that ideas are a dime
a dozen.  People who implement ideas are what counts.  The newsgroup has
FAQs on that sort of thing.  Of course, those FAQs presuppose a desire
to Have A Career [TM] and Get Things Done [TM].

> Sure, Xconq would in a way benefit if we made all the right
> decisions and never went down the
> "wrong tracks" and analyze things carefully before every step
> and so on.  But that would be
> _BORING_ because we would not do any experimentation, no "we
> try this out and if it don't work we'll scrap it".

Why do you think I'm gunning for Python?  It's a prototyping language.
But I'm not gunning for XML / SVG because nobody's going to get that
done.  I'm plenty happy if you do it, but you said you ain't gonna do
it.  Maybe I can goad you into doing it....

> Xconq has been developing slowly in a sense and I can see
> that if you're impatient, that can be
> frustrating to see other people reluctant to force the
> development pace.

I don't see that as an issue.  You said up front that you're not going
to contribute to the development pace at all, so I'm not worried about
what pace you'd like to see things go at.  I haven't really heard, one
way or the other, what people who actually code intend to do.  I figure
I'll judge them by what they code.  I saw someone check in a non-trivial
piece of pathfinding code recently, so I'm encouraged that there are
Doers around here.

> Another intresting thing, given that Xconq don't develop at
> the speed of light is that the Xconq
> project actually can monitor other, not ready, projects for
> useful tools to use in a year or two.

Fine, but I don't need a year's worth of lead time to crank up
Sourceforge.net.  I don't make plans on the basis of "Oh, wow, I could
do that a year from now!  Let's hurry up and wait!"  I make plans based
on what I can do today.  Maybe I get hit by a truck a year from now.
Maybe they haven't gotten their act together a year from now.

> But who knows, I might have time in February next year to do
> some sabotages by infecting Xconq
> with XML/SVG...  "XML Batik? xpat?

THAT'S THE SPIRIT!!  I knew you were too enthusiastic to be all talk.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.


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