unity-design team mailing list archive

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Ryan Gauger <rtgkid@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> But I do not see how it is a burden to developers. Why not just leave it
> as it was? I just don't understand the burden part. Someone please explain
> it to me. Thanks!!!
>

>From a developer's perspective...

Every additional line of code, every additional code path:
- makes my mental model of the code more complicated. This makes the
program harder to think about and harder to work on.
- provides more things to test, leading to more bugs in general, and more
bugs making it into stable releases.
- grows the size of the program, making it slower to run.

Every additional user-settable option, in addition to the above costs, also
doubles the number of possible complete configurations, doubling the amount
of testing required.

While the particular feature under discussion seems conceptually simple,
and therefore cheap, it isn't (for example, it required a not-insignificant
patch to nautilus to get icons on the desktop to align properly - everyone
I know was glad to see that dropped).

When designing a large, widely-used project like Unity you have to be
brutally strict about what is allowed in terms of features and options, or
else the project begins to bloat under the weight of hundreds of these
'little' features and options. It starts being slow, buggy, and painful to
use.

Hope this explanation helps,
Evan