Bo Barry and everyone else.
1, I AM NOT dumping on Ian here.? I am trying to get him to pay attention to problems with his programming which he has chosen to ignore.? So DO NOT accuse me of dumping on him.? All I'm asking is for him to slow down, fix his original code so that it works properly and then integrate all the really nice features he's tried to add and do it so that it works right, not haphazardly.? There are too many users of his code out there who have been silently complaining about little things and have been afraid to anger the rest of the users and the programmer.? I'm not afraid to do so but I'm NOT dumping on him, merely calling on him to do what's right and FIX the problems instead or trying to work around them which adds unnecessary complexity to the program and makes the source code almost totally unreadable even by an extremely experienced programmer.
If you call that dumping then you have never had anyone take a critical but constructive look at any work you have done and should keep out of the discussion.
2.? The first rule of GOOD program development is to get the basic program running PROPERLY before responding to added feature requests.? This makes adding those features MUCH easier and quicker as you don't have so much program code to debug in the first place.
3.? A programmer should not simply patch problematical things between the original main program and any added features. He/she should address the root cause of the problem and fix that first before trying to fix other problems that crop up during the adding of features to the basic program.? Additions should integrate seamlessly with the basic routines.
4, On the humorous side, there has been a standing rule called "Murphy's Law" of programming that states emphatically, "The size of the program code will always expand to fill all available memory space plus at least one byte!"? This has happened with the meager programming space in the NANO by trying to add too many features to the program.?
This has nothing to do with just
"Free" open source software, it applies to ALL software development whether done on a commercial or hobby level.? If the programmer learns to do it right in the first place then that person becomes a far better programmer so don't ask me how much I paid him for his program(s).? Know this, if it was being sold commercially in the form it's in right now, it probably would have a lot of people demanding their money back.? That goes for much of the hacked code out there now, not just that coming from Ian or W2CTX or W8TEE (the major programmers actively putting stuff out to the uBITX community.)
Jim Sheldon, W0EB
(My final word on this subject)
Jim Sheldon