Re: contacts, was: Re: [Gnumed-devel] DrugBrowser nicer piccie

[J Busser]

At 1:23 AM +0100 2/2/06, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
>  > I get totally put off my what seems to be your attitude, of 'why are you
> >  bothering - we have already done that.....'
> See, the thing is that I always mistakenly assumed you *already knew* how to
> do it and I was always wondering why you would then want to redo it. I did
> not realize you had to learn the How first.

It is said that the smart person knows what to say, and the wise 
person whether or not to say it. And maybe I am neither :-)

But I *do* think that partial understandings and misunderstanding 
have been a key part of some of the frustrations.

Within what may be my limited perspective, Richard has always seemed 
highly able. But that might derive from whatever set or sets of 
computing approaches and tools he had already had the chance to 
master.

For within familiar paradigms or approaches, a change of tools might 
be quite manageable. But if it is more than just the tools that need 
to be learned (and sometimes even just learning the new tools is a 
challenge) it explains how some online proposed approaches, 
"solutions", and even explanations, can be over people's heads.

Others can venture any cultural insights. For example, whether within 
a "Germanic / Teutonic" mode, something that seems easy to a person 
(who happens to know it or find it easy) can be rightly pronounced to 
be "easy" without meaning to imply (though it can be taken as 
implying) that others should also have an easy time. Maybe that is 
misinterpreted as indifference, or worse.

See, I am sure Horst finds everything easy. Which I interpret to mean 
I might never be able to do it except after 10 years. Whereas if he 
said "dead easy", I would figure on 5 years. It doesn't occur to me 
to get upset about it. But I suppose I might get upset, if I expected 
to be able to do something in 3-6 months that then proved beyond me 
:-)

Mostly I think we are struggling around "nearly" being able to get 
GNUmed off the ground. It has not quite enough development. We would 
like it to be more developed, to make it more "adoptable". I keep 
thinking if I and a few others can get it running, obtaining enough 
value from it to want to depend on it for clinical use, we might 
commit to finding or hiring a bit of help. Help that, in helping 
locally, also contributes to the project.

That won't solve the circularity for any who feel that to be usable, 
its GUI and functions must be many and well-built from the start. But 
maybe the circularity is solvable by those with lesser demands on 
GNUmed, who could tolerate some limited function, yet contribute 
support (or their support people) to a concerted re-write. I am happy 
to hang in, while still being entreated locally to use something else.