[FFmpeg-user] should I shoot the dog?

[Carl Zwanzig]

On 9/29/2020 12:43 PM, Paul B Mahol wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 10:26:20AM -0400, Mark Filipak (ffmpeg) wrote:
>> And thanks for that. So, ffmpeg really is a Tower of Babel, eh? That does
>> not seem wise to me. That seems like a great way to generate bugs in
>> addition to confusion.

> Now if that is not trolling out of pure ignorance I dunno what is.

Actually, it sounds like it might be an accurate representation of the 
entire codebase. Cryptic code without explanations _is_ a good way to cause 
bugs, at least that's my experience (which goes back a fair ways).

That said, as with many systems which evolve over time, the interfaces and 
understandings morph although the explanations often don't. And when there 
isn't a single entity (is there?) to direct the process and a single 
cohesive view of how things should go, chaos happens. One example was a 
while ago when someone suggested that a specific option was not consistent 
with other related ones- the great hew and cry was "WE CAN"T CHANGE THAT!!!" 
instead of "Hmm, it might make more sense to change this one for 
consistency's sake, yes, it'll break some older usages, but it'll be more 
logical in general."


> I'm really asking mysefl why are there still people feeding this poor troll.

Because he's contributing to the overall knowledge? A lot of things are 
being described that I've found to be quite useful and _should_ be part of 
the overall documentation, be it in code comments or separate files.

A note to Mark F.-
If you refuse to try understanding even the basics of 'c', which shouldn't 
be that difficult to anyone who has ever programmed, you're holding yourself 
back.

z!