Re: [LAD] Experience driven design and Linux Audio

On Wed, 1 Oct 2014, Paul Davis wrote: An interesting chat. In his case the reasons for saying no to user requests might be different, though not by much. I also realize maybe I am taking the original question off of what it was asking. The original talk was about something that is perhaps not understandable in the context of creation rather consuming. Many of the newer DEs are frustrating for developers (not just SW development), but developers even though there are many, are a very small percentage of computer users. Most are consumers, games and browsing are almost all that happens. From that POV win8, unity, gnome3, OSx, Android, etc. all make sense. From a developers POV (POV meaning personal use), they don't. Someone who is creating music, video or graphics is a developer and their needs are not the same as the consumer. Once that difference is pushed out of the way and one looks at the user experience from a developer's POV the "experience" that is expected is different but it is still there. I remember having 4 or more terminals open for creating sw: One to edit (or more), one to try different configurations, one to compile and one to test. I hated the full screen way that a lot of consumer based people worked. Now we have a GUI with all of these things built in. Many audio programs have done the same thing. We have the DAW that takes a full screen and does everything. Linux audio has been different with separate tools connected together. As many of us started with tape... this makes sense to us. Even a home studio had many boxes wired together. If you wanted to add effects to one channel a separate box was used outside of the mixer. A sequencer was a separate box. Each synth was a separate box. Because of physical limitations, the wiring configuration was changed for each project or song... maybe more than once. Soon it was figured out that these routings might be changed not only to get around limitations, but also for artistic reasons. I think some of us miss that ability to be able to wire things as we wish in the monolythic SW blob. One who has worked with physical boxes for everything finds a simple interface difficult to use. They have to go looking for the bits they want. It is like having someone come into the studio and take any box that is not in use right now and put it in storage... across town, in different warehouses according to categories a herbalist would use. For the newcomer who has started on a DAW based all in one box, all is fine, they only use the tools that are visible... Your clip says only for the first few months... but it does agree that the tools shape the music. What I expect has changed, but it is still based on experience that covers a lot of technical advancement. I grew up in a house where all the electronics used tubes. I was given a transiter radio at 8 and I think this was the first solid state device we had. monochrome TV was pretty standard.... we actually got one in the house when I was 10 or so. The first personal computers had a row of switches on the front like a pdp8. An Apple computer had a 6502 in it and no mouse. In all I am pretty happy that the consumer use of computers is as widespead as it is. This means that HW is relatively cheap. Really most people use computers in a way that could as easily (maybe better) be satisfied with and Xbox or Wii and a keyboard/mouse. I am glad people have not figured this out yet. Or may be that "set top boxes" havn't taken over. Perhaps what I am saying is that I am quite happy to be using my computer in a niche market and I am glad there are enough people who think the same to be able to persue music the way I do. Often people have a blurb here saying this was sent from a <Brand> mobile phone. perhaps I could say sent from Pine (or is it Alpine these days?) with a minimal text editor... -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net