Georgina Prodhan of Reuters, Frankfurt interviews uncle Phil. It’s a good interview, short but sweet without much said that isn’t already known, other than he admits they didn’t foresee the rise in laptop popularity (less capable in CPU power and graphics abilities.)
“Rosedale said a new generation of computers with more powerful graphics capacities would help stimulate wider interest in Second Life, where avatar models representing users fly or teleport around and can buy and sell land in Linden dollars.”
[Emphasis above is mine]
The interview is about Rosedale’s belief that Second Life will become ‘mainstream’. The problem isn’t only the interface, it’s so many other things. Such as the horrible abysmal introduction new users experience when they first enter the SL world. he basically admit (again) in this quote how sloppy Linden lab’s code is. but, at least he admits it.
Beyond that, there are stability issues and a bugs list that when printed out might possibly bridge the Atlantic ocean (okay – I’m exaggerating… I think.)
The real problem is sloppy code. Also known as ‘spaghetti’. There is so much useless old code mixed-in the the newer stuff that no one knows what to cut out and what to keep.
Code efficiency is completely lost.
Believe it or not, the same is true with Microsoft Windows™ and many other applications. It’s likely true to some degree with Apple OS X®, albeit on a much lighter level.
The real problem is lazy coders. They are relying on the sheer power and speed of new generation CPUs (Central Processing Units) and faster RAM (Random Access Memory) and bus speeds and graphics processors and all the rest. So they can write sloppy, inefficient code and get away with it.
If there’s a bug, don’t always try to fix it, simply bypass that part of the code and leave it alone. A ‘detour’ of sorts. This creates garbage in the mix. Unused code that someone down the road will see and not know what it is, why it’s there and how it’s used.
Slop. Plain and simple.
The problem with Miscrosoft Windows, for instance is the insistence that Windows remain backward compatible. Think about it. All that garbage code that’s in there that you never use – that practically no one ever uses. it won’t be long before MS Windows is distributed on DVD because it simply won’t fit on a CD-ROM.
I feel Apple made the right decision: make the switch from Mac OS (Classic) to OS X (OS 10) and cut-off all legacy code. Include a new emulator to run legacy applications to ween the users away from them. There was definitely a user backlash. But the code is much cleaner and Apple customers are among the happiest of all computer users (consistently rated poll after poll.) And, if you were to purchase OS X version .5 (known as Leopard) – the Classic Mac OS emulator isn’t even installed by default. In fact, I’m not even sure if it’s included any longer at all.
Rosedale (and Microsoft, for that matter) needs to follow that example. Boil the code, rewrite it from scratch or, at least, strip it to it’s bare essentials and basically start over. Clean it up. make it efficient. Don’t be lazy and rely on the power of hardware to run sloppy code.
See the interview with Rosedale here:
Reuters/Second Life » New Linden CEO could be named within weeks
Tags: Secondlife, Socially Disgraceful, Linden Lab
