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| Birmingham New Street 30/08/2010 at 08:53 #11147 | |
postal
5265 posts |
For heavens sake can we please think about how we can put and end to this debate as it is clearly one which will not be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. My understanding of the situation is that Aaron / Kieran is not happy about how the whole SimSig thing works as it does not conform to his model. He (apologies if Aaron / Kieran are noms de guerre and it should be "she"  has advanced this thesis for some time now and whether you agree with him or not, you have to concede that he has shown a consistency of purpose and great fortitude in holding that line. To achieve Aaron / Kieran's aim would require those he sees as an "inner circle" to completely change the way that they operate in the production, development, testing, publicising and releasing of sims. As the debate has progressed, it is plain that this is not going to happen. It is also apparent from the postings which have been made throughout the various manifestations of this debate that there is not a great wish among those who post to the Forum for Aaron / Kieran's manifesto to be implemented.That is an impasse. All that happens in that situation is that every new outbreak of the debate entrenches the positions even further, with more bad feeling and more evidence that "principle" is the enemy of common sense. Please don't take this as an attack on Aaron / Kieran, who has raised some important questions about the way that SimSig operates. However, there does come a time when people on both sides have to realise that despite all of the efforts made, there is no great desire for change and that it would be for the greater good if the matter could be closed down once and for all. “In life, there is always someone out there, who won’t like you, for whatever reason, don’t let the insecurities in their lives affect yours.” – Rashida Rowe Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 30/08/2010 at 09:13 #11148 | |
Ray
211 posts 
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I would love to give comment about the psychology behind all this argument but I will resist the temptation.
Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 30/08/2010 at 09:26 #11149 | |
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JamesN
1608 posts
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From day one Aaron you have constantly and continually questioned the way SimSig operates - at odds with 99% of regular users of this forum. At the end of the day the developers hold the cards and it is up to them, individually, to decide what to do with those cards. If they choose to bend to pressure supplied by yourself and be more open, excellent. At the end of the day it's not a bad thing, and I don't think anyone disputes that. On the other hand they could choose to keep the situation exactly as it is - Which requires the minimum of effort and doesn' detract from time that could be spent developing. Don't get me wrong, I admire your tenacity and your cause. But it simply isn't going to happen. End of. Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 30/08/2010 at 09:57 #11151 | |
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Firefly
521 posts |
I have no argument with anybody on this forum and I wish to keep it that way. I think that some people are mistaking SimSig for a product or service that they've purchased. If you paid for a service you would rightly expect a certain level of forthcoming information, support, friendliness and professionalism. We don't pay for SimSig so if we get any of the above it’s a bonus. Simsig is a project that some people have chosen to work on in their spare time, just for the fun of it. Getting hassled for progress reports takes that fun element away and makes it feel like a job. I have no idea why Geoff stopped charging for SimSig but I wonder if it was to avoid getting hassled by people who felt he owed them a response? I don’t believe that anybody on the SimSig team owes us (the community) anything. None of the volunteers should feel duty bound to do anything in their spare time including posting updates. What does knowing how it’s progressing actually achieve? It won’t arrive any quicker if the developers tell you how they are getting on, it will just cause disappointment when the developers target date is missed and put more pressure on the developer to meet that target. (hence, it will be ready when it’s ready) Why should the developer feel pressured? Of course, I have real life experience of this. As the Tester in Charge of real re-signalling schemes on the railway I was forever being asked for progress updates. It’s not always possible to give a straight answer because there are tasks that can take 10 minutes on a good day and 6 hours on a bad day. The difference is Network Rail needed to know because they had to arrange for pilotman, hand signalman, point operators, buses etc if we were going to overrun. It was my JOB to give them an intelligent answer and I had to accept the consequences if I got it wrong. If you’re reading this and thinking he’s wrong, we deserve more information, try this for an analogy:- Your next door neighbour loves gardening and know lots about it, you know nothing about gardening but like the results (ie a nice garden). Your neighbour volunteers to come round and do lots of work in your garden for you. You accept. Your neighbour discusses some of the things that he'd like to achieve with your garden, it sounds fantastic, you are very happy, it's going to be great. Things move a bit slowly because it turns out your neighbour is also doing everyone else's garden in you road. Would you hassle your neighbour for progress reports and updates and complain if his answers were non-committal? If you were to hassle them, you'd probably be told to P**s Off and that would be the end of him doing your garden. Simsig is gift, it's rude to ask for gifts before someone is ready to give them to you and it's rude to complain about a gift once you've received it. This problem is not unique to SimSig, it happens in other walks of life. I'm a Scout Leader, it takes up most of my spare time. I use my very valuable annual leave to go on camps and I also have to pay for these camps. A couple of parents are extremely appreciative and they buy us a crate of beers or boxes chocolates etc. A few are extremely appreciative and will always be there to help out whenever we ask for help. The majority treat us like a cheap babysitting service and never get off of their fat arses to help with fund raising or help pack for camp. And then a small handful seem to think that we owe them something and complain about a lack of information, late information or the way that we've come to a decision or planned something. That small handful of people really annoy us and often make us want to tell them to P**s Off and take their child with them. The trouble is, it's only the child that would miss out. TO THE USERS:- Chill out, sit back, relax, enjoy the multitude of sims that are already available and remember that good things come to those that wait. TO THE DEVELOPERS:- Keep up the hard work. You’ll never please everyone, and remember that some of the people that are asking these questions are still at school, have little life experience and hence they can’t understand what it’s like to do voluntary work in their spare time. Sorry for the rant, hopefully people can see where I'm coming from. Kev Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 30/08/2010 at 11:16 #11154 | |
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IrishDave
51 posts |
Aaron said:My postings raise questions about fairness, equality and inclusiveness. I thank Geoff and his team for the work that they do and admire their skill in what they acheive. I don't have to agree with them on all matters because they provide railway simulation programs.Your thanks are duly noted, and welcomed. Aaron said: This thread is about communication. It is about what developers say, not what they do.Put yourself in Geoff's position for a moment: imagine you had 1000 people behind you all asking you "when's this going to be ready?" Now, you could try and answer them all, which would take a huge amount of time, or you could put earplugs in and get on with building the sim so that the hoards are quiet and happy as soon as possible. Geoff and the devs have chosen the latter. That's the way it has been, that's the way it's gonna be, that's the way it is. I'm sorry if you don't like it. The fact is that the current policy of not giving any information as to when sims may or may not be released lets the developers get on with developing without interruption, and this benefits the community as a whole because we get actual sims, instead of just information about sims. I, for one, would much rather have, say, a working copy of Birmingham New Street than the knowledge that Birmingham New Street may be released tomorrow or in four years time. Aaron said: BSE35's original question about Birmingham displayed keeness and interest and ended with a polite thank you message. The reply he received was poor communication. BSE35 is probably thinking after a response like that, I won't bother to ask any more questions or make suggestions.I agree that BSE35 has probably been put off from asking simple questions for quite some time; I, for one, would like to apologise to BSE35 on Aaron's behalf for the thread being hijacked. But the reply was not poor communication; not replying at all would be poor communication. No, Matt explained the situation in a friendly manner, and answered the question. If Aaron had not then put in his tuppence-worth, then the following 28 replies (plus this one that I'm writing) would not have been necessary and we could all have got on with our lives. Aaron said: It is straightforward to give news about what the SimSig team are doing, how it is progressing etc, without having a detrimental effect on the work taking place.No, it isn't! The internals of Simsig are far, far more complicated than anyone outside the development team (and maybe some of the testers) can really appreciate; there is so much data and so much code that even understanding how a sim works is insanely complicated. Getting the sim to a playable state is more-or-less a matter of plugging the data in, and making sure any particular foibles are fixed; it's much harder to get it to a state where it can be played by anyone, and not just testers who know that, say, in order to get a train there you have to do this particular complicated dance because the ARS is broken because this signal isn't set up right because there's a track circuit missing because... because... Some bugs are so obscure that they take years of staring and poking and testing until someone has an idea and says "it wouldn't be related to this, would it?" At which point the developer usually slaps his forehead, curses under his breath, and has it fixed in five minutes. But it hasn't taken five minutes to fix the bug, it's taken two years. How on earth do you communicate the fact that "we've got this really complicated bug, but we don't really know why it exists and people have been looking out for what's causing it for a year and we don't know why it's there..."? Surely it's better to just let the testers get on with it. It's a bit like the plumber who's called out to fix a boiler; the boiler is spluttering and works about half the time, but not all the time. The plumber comes round, climbs up his ladder and looks at the boiler; he stares intently at every little part for about 10 minutes, before saying "a-ha!". He runs out to his van, grabs a tiny little hammer, runs back up the ladder, and taps the top corner of the boiler with the hammer, and it magically springs back to life. The plumber sends him a bill for £10,000, itemised as follows: Hitting boiler with hammer: £10. Knowing where to hit boiler with hammer: £9,990. Getting a sim to a releasable state is *hard* work which requires a lot of thought, and being interrupted by writing emails means losing concentration. And since the developers (and many of the testers, myself included) are perfectionists, we choose to do it, not to release half-baked sims. (Otherwise, we'd then get far more complaints about this bug and that bug and even more time would be wasted in responding to bugs that we could just have fixed before releasing it.) Aaron said: SimSig needs to consider not only the developers and the forum members who attend meetings, but also the wider forum. It is a question of outlook - who does SimSig serve? The answer given to BSE35 demonstates that he is not included.If you mean that BSE35 is not included in the development circle, then no, he is not, and neither are you, Aaron, with good reason: only people who know what they're doing and who can be trusted are permitted to be developers and testers, because the development team want it that way. This is judged to be best for the community, because it means that only near-perfect sims are released, and only when they're absolutely ready. I believe - and I think the vast majority of forum users would agree - that *that* is the best way to "serve" the Simsig community. For the record, I had hoped to get a few hours this bank holiday weekend to finish off the King's Cross, Peterborough and Cambridge timetables for 15th October 2009 which I did a public test of back in May (which you may remember, Aaron?), but I've now spent an hour just writing this post alone, not to mention the previous two. Well done, Aaron, for delaying everyone's enjoyment of these timetables. Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 30/08/2010 at 11:21 #11155 | |
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TomOF
452 posts |
For what it's worth my humble opinion I'm currently developing 2 simulations. I spend my day job doing similar work which does have deadlines. Imagine then when I get home my motivation might be lacking a bit from time to time having spent all day at it and I don't feel like getting my head in the data. It's the same for many other of the developers. Day job comes first. SIMSIG comes second. I got my fingers burnt when I used to develop for BVE for announcing something that in the end I was unable to finish. I spent around 6 years on and off working on it but i felt it wasn't up to scratch so have put it aside- I felt bad for announcing something long before it was ready. I'm sure others would feel the same if they announce a project and it turns out to take longer than expected. So back to SIMSIG- I've been working on one sim since Feb 2009 and it's not ready for beta testing. The other sim isn't even good enough for an alpha! I didn't make any progress for 2 months earlier this year when I made a mistake that proved almost impossible to sort until I had cleared a backlog of other errors- totally my fault -I owe someone alot of pints for his help! Luckily I hadn't announced anything at that point or made a beta available. Once the sim is in the beta phase it will be many weeks or months of taking feedback from my testers , fixes restests etc until I'm satisfied it's ready for release. I just wanted to point out a typical development cycle and some of the Issues developers face. I really feel that you need to take a step back from this issue and look at it from another direction. Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 31/08/2010 at 23:42 #11224 | |
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clive
2789 posts |
Aaron said:It is a question of outlook - who does SimSig serve?As far as I am concerned, it serves me! I write simulations and improve the core code because I enjoy it. It's my hobby. When I stop enjoying it then I'll stop working on it. I've said before that I've got two simulations - WembleySub and Euston - in the pipeline, followed by revisions to Peterborough. I don't recall what else I've said. Things will be ready when they're ready. I am not even going to attempt estimates or give progress reports; even when a simulation goes to beta testers, I may decide to add new features or make other changes before release. And even without that, I have an overly-busy real life and can't predict how much time I have to spend on simulations. No matter how much Aaron nags, he can't alter that. Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 01/09/2010 at 11:35 #11226 | |
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Sam Tugwell
494 posts |
clive said:Quite right Clive. As you write these programs, its right that you should enjoy them as much as we all do. And Aaron, if you want to sow your thanks to the developers, then why not apply to become a tester? "Signalman Exeter" Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 01/09/2010 at 11:47 #11227 | |
Peter Bennet
5402 posts |
I advertised for CSCOT testered a few months ago and got 2 responses. Peter I identify as half man half biscuit - crumbs! Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 01/09/2010 at 11:53 #11228 | |
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derbybest
274 posts |
I agree Peter that was dissapointing. I was one of 'the two' and was glad to help and will help again or indeed any other developer if needed Chris Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 01/09/2010 at 12:04 #11229 | |
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Sam Tugwell
494 posts |
Peter Bennet said:I advertised for CSCOT testered a few months ago and got 2 responses.If any of the new sims need testing Peter, you can count on me! "Signalman Exeter" Log in to reply |
| Birmingham New Street 02/09/2010 at 07:16 #11243 | |
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Albert
1315 posts |
I could also help, but the 'CScot 2' topic has gone
AJP in games Log in to reply |