[xine-devel] Re: [MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: [matroska-devel] Re: Common Opensource codec API

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sun, Dec 28, 2003 at 09:45:01PM +0100, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> <snip>
> > mp3lib (mpg123) sucks! Properly written codecs are not like this. It
> > doesn't take any "common api" nonsense, just competent programming.
> 
> Yes, of course. Its the same reason, why we dont need thinkgs like 
> garbage collection or fully automated build systems, because we expect
> all people to be good pogrammers and those who aren't should go away.
> 
> Don't you think, you're a little bit too arrogant ?

I have zero tolerance for bad coding. It's what loses people's data,
gets their systems cracked, and wastes my time and many other people's
on fixing it (and no, I don't do this for a living, just because it
needs to be done). That doesn't mean I never write bad code, or that I
hate the actual people who write bad code, but I have no interest in
accommodating people who refuse to move forward and _learn_ something
and insist on newbie-oriented api's to compensate for their
incompetence.

If you call this arrogance, then so be it. I call it perfectionism.
When designing an api for G2, I'm going to go with the ideas of the
people I can trust to maximize performance, reliability, and
functionality, rather than try to make compromises with people who
have different goals like simplicity (various other players) or
over-engineering (like Matroska). They have every right to exist and
do their thing, but I have no wish to be a part of "their thing", and
I can tell you most if not all of the core MPlayer developers feel the
same.

Rich