kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mário Luzeiro <mrluzeiro@xxxxx>]

Hi,

nice analysis!


> I think to understand KiCad have very important tasks to be done to be future proof:

> - I understand KiCad needs desperately a massive and careful refactoring.
> * Maybe there's still too much cowboy coding and stuff to clean before implementing important but complex features.
> * Maybe part of that refactoring could help making the code easier to understand to new developers.
> ** This would mean following somewhat strict and defined coding practices, very documented code and other stuff developers are aware of it for sure.

That is all true, but.. it 100% applies to all projects I worked / am working and that is maybe the "rule" unfortunately. 
I once read somewhere that we are still in the early stages of software development. The humanity still dont have 100 years of software development so there are still lots of questions how to solve this issue with softwares. That will be the holly grail solution.

I estimate that such type of a task like that in a project like this would need a year or more of work with a team in the same room re-designing and re-writing the software (from scratch?).
During this time, no new support can be added (or it need to be merged or rewrited again in the end... )

That is a problem unfortunately for real companies / products: "we cannot stop to make a refactoring of the software, because we must continue to support and ship the product !".
And this is a nightmare for developers :/

The good thing here, is that KiCad is not a company so there is no problem to stop "shipping the product" :)
That is a point you can explore in your "thesis" and evaluate the pros/cons etc..

Cheers!
Mario Luzeiro

________________________________________
From: Kicad-developers [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of timofonic timofonic [timofonic@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 11 September 2015 22:47
To: KiCad Developers; kicad-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Kicad-developers] Some personal, fastly written and naive early draft notes about trying to understand KiCad