Итак, видать у него клизмоиды посыпались. Вот что он пишет у себя в блоге:
KDE has a great history of configuration options. Sometimes, however, we use that as a cop out and instead of making a good decision or a hard decision we make no decision and instead put an option in there. Besides the cost on the code itself (more code paths, etc, etc) there's a cost to the usage of the software.
Every option shown to the person using the software is something they have to read and understand. Then they have to choose whether to interact with that option or not. Is it what they are looking for? What happens if they toggle it? Where is that thing I'd like to control? At some point, people will give up, get frustrated or both. At best it slows them down, at worst it causes them to stop using the software all together.
So when deciding which options should be there, know the audience and its needs (e.g. technical applications will often have a lot more gadgetry to them) and be ready to make hard decisions. If it turns out that it does indeed need to be made optional, it can be added later. Taking back an option once offered is really hard, though. It makes people sad.
The good news is that if a few hard choices are made, including the occasional «no, I'm not going to make that optional even though you and your friend have asked for it nicely», there will be lots of room for other options that are highly valuable and useful.
So think twice before doing the «just make it configurable» dance. It's one step towards how we can have our cake (great configurability) and eat it too (have good looking and highly usable software).
Для Ъ: в кде привыкли перекладывать решения по работе приложения на юзеров, делая это в виде дополнительных настроек. Зато разработчикам не нужно париться и думать, как сделать лучше. Но юзерам не всегда охота париться с настройками, зачастую они не понимают вообще, для чего нужны определенные опции. Поэтому разработчики должны думать об аудитории приложения и принимать сами решение по поводу доступных настроек. Поэтому надо думать дважды перед тем, как предоставлять юзеру какие-то настройки.
Вот так вот. Ну что, товарищи кедерасты, готовьтесь к тотальному хигу.
