Re: Poor plot performance on Windows

[Jake]

Very familiar with open-source development. Going to offend many by saying so, but here's the unavoidable truth about what makes a project good or bad:

- Bad: developers only work on what they personally need and/or are dismissive of others' issues. Those same developers tend not to help others get started because they only care about their own problems.

- Good: developers work on their own problems + others' problems. Developers care about the quality and completeness of the project and work towards "finishing" the project, not just making it "good enough".

On principle alone, the plot window should not take more than a few seconds to appear, period. This problem has been around for a long time now, reported by multiple people multiple times. I have used Octave off and on for years and basically I can't use it more because my main need is also MATLAB does it faster and more consistently, therefore it is possible.

I would consider paying a small amount to someone to first find the problem, and then I might be willing to go in with others on paying someone to fix the problem.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 11:32 AM, Nicholas Jankowski <address@hidden> wrote:

On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 2:23 PM, Jake <address@hidden> wrote:

Yes but the plumber hasn't heard stories about how the toilet screws up for 4 years straight before coming over. Hasn't someone already tried to locate the problem in the past 4 years and failed?

 

Well, maybe, but for many (most?) people plotting is not a time critical process. Most people ran into the 'first plot takes a long time' issue, but just deal with that and move on. Most Windows users are just that, users, and not developers. So those with the problem are not equipped to fix it, and it doesn't get raised high up the priority list, either by personal need or significant user clamoring, for those without the problem to figure out how to fix it (which again, is troublesome if they aren't running Windows...) 

Open source, community development software: people work on stuff as they see a need and have free time they feel worth devoting to the issue. Mike suggested just one more option for incentivizing desired development.

Trust me, I've seen many things (from homes to infrastructure) where things don't get fixed because it isn't critical relative to other issues, even when it's quite well known.

nick j