Any Questions about or Suggestions for the next release?

[Darin McBride]

On Wed, 01 Sep 1999 09:45:38 -0400, Jonathan B. Bayer wrote:

>People,
>
>You are all thinking like programmers.  The average user (even an OS/2
>user) doesn't know the standard OS/2 guidelines.  Therefore, when they
>see the statement:

What we have here is one programmer (can't even recall who started the
thread) talking to another (Bob&Ike).  The fact that it makes no sense
to anyone else doesn't really matter - it's concise, and
understandable, between the two, making it very valid conversation in
another language.

>>>    "...and add multithreading wherever things take more than 0.1 s to
>>>complete..."
>
>it will sound like:
>
>>>that whenever things are going too slow, just throw threads at it and, hence,
>>>shorten the time it takes for the task to complete.
>
>OS/2 programmers will understand:
>
>>No, it's a reference that, whenever things take too long in the input
>>queue, you're supposed to throw a thread at it so that the user
>>interface comes back in a responsive manner.
>
>Remember, the average user doesn't know what happens internally, they
>just want things to work.

Sure.  But it so happens that one user, who knows the language of OS/2
programming, wants to convey a relatively large concept concisely to
the developer.  IMO, it was done effectively, only to be misconstrued
by others.

>Regarding the statement:
>
>>Standard OS/2 guideline.  PMMail and PMINews don't always follow the
>>guideline.
>
>Many other programs also don't follow the guidelines.

True.  And they need to be fixed, too.  However, the most grotesque
ignoring of this guideline shows up in PMINews, then PMMail (although I
rarely encounter a problem here), then Lotus Notes.  These programs do
not use threads (Lotus Notes!), or, worse, in the case of PMINews, use
them very improperly.

The fact that other programs fail to follow these guidelines doesn't
make it all right here.