----- Original Message ----- From: "Ira" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 2:50 PM Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Upgrade to Asterisk 1.4 - it's one year's old!
> At 10:14 AM 12/15/2007, you wrote: >>So Digium, (I address the company since Tilghman now works for you) do >>you have any plans to query the user community and determine what a >>typical end user of the product needs? With the knowledge and skill that >>exists in your organization it would seem trivial to put something in >>place to allow user feedback not only developer feedback for release >>direction. >> >>My 2 cents, ok 25 cents, >>Dave > > I have a somewhat different opinion. I once used a product where upon > announcing the features of the next release to a rather disenchanted > audience pointed out that the product now contained what you needed > to get your job done, and not necessarily what you wanted. The people > unwilling to learn walked away disappointed, those willing to think > about what they'd been given were constantly surprised at the > newfound capabilities of the product. People always ask for stuff > they don't need that they're unwilling to figure out how to do > themselves. A perfect example is the new dial plan function array(), > it has nothing to do with arrays, doesn't accomplish anything useful > that couldn't have been done by allowing commas in set(), or calling > it setmany(), and means if real arrays ever get added to the language > we have to come up with new function names while the obvious one has > already been taken to mean something not related. > > I know lots of people have thousands of hours in dial plans to solve > specific problems, but personally I'd have no problem if the > deprecated the whole dial plan script language and started over. > Well, I'd be happy if they came up with an elegant language with > functions, parameters and proper variable scoping while getting rid > of line numbers and all the rest of the baggage that shouldn't have > been there in the first place. AEL is an attempt to solve some of > that, but as it's just a precompiler to the underlying language it > has limitations that shouldn't be there. > > I'm sure that's not a popular opinion as people don't tend to like > change, but in the long run it would make Asterisk a better product. > Sadly it's probably already too late. > > I still cringe whenever I see people acknowledge line numbers in new > books. > > Ira Then fork or "learn" how to re-write and submit your code for this "elegant language" you speak of and see how it flies. Thanks, Steve Totaro _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-users mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
