Elitist Jerks - View Single Post

Nadiar · 07/22/08, 7:09 PM

The problem with WAU was twofold:
1) No programmers of sufficient skill were willing to work on creating a high quality.
2) Several Developers were using it incorrectly.

While the first problem is something that would need to be corrected, the second problem is only due to the approach they were using, but even a successful correction would need to force them to properly tag their AddOns as Alpha, Beta, or Release.

For advertisements, there were multiple situations in which the WAU ads were 'infected' with other advertisements, or actually infected with trojans, which points to a failure in the model used for monetary support.

I'm sure they have some form of analysis on where their bandwidth was going, but from what I understand, an incredible source of bandwidth was spent only on updating the WAU index. The index was a completely horrible method of accessing it. It should have been reintegrated as a sql query, showing only the updates from the last updated local index.

I'm also reasonably certain that their SVN should be able to determine all of the updated files from their last download, and package only the updates files together, which would have drastically saved on bandwidth (since users would likely be downloading a 10k compressed Lua file instead of 3MB files full of images and static data files).

Next, I would have programmed in the ability to publish any 'release' quality update to WoWInterface and Curse, directly from a web interface for the Developers. This reduces the reliance on using WowAce for distribution, and removes part of the laziness barrier that seems prevelent in many of the Developers.

Honestly, the entire beauty of WowAce has now been completely removed. AddOn developers left to their own devices won't follow any revision control procedures, which is something that WowAce forced on developers. All of the other benefits of WowAce were incidental. Memory and CPU utilization were not always true, and the ease with which a Developer could be replaced on any specific AddOn was indeed much smoother than the alternatives on Curse and WowInterface (which created situations where we had several terms such as Reborn, Renewed, Refreshed, 2.0, or II, all in circulation simultaneously).

07/22/08, 7:09 PM	#5 (permalink)
Nadiar Von Kaiser Nadiar Human Mage <Casual Raiders> Silver Hand	The problem with WAU was twofold: 1) No programmers of sufficient skill were willing to work on creating a high quality. 2) Several Developers were using it incorrectly. While the first problem is something that would need to be corrected, the second problem is only due to the approach they were using, but even a successful correction would need to force them to properly tag their AddOns as Alpha, Beta, or Release. For advertisements, there were multiple situations in which the WAU ads were 'infected' with other advertisements, or actually infected with trojans, which points to a failure in the model used for monetary support. I'm sure they have some form of analysis on where their bandwidth was going, but from what I understand, an incredible source of bandwidth was spent only on updating the WAU index. The index was a completely horrible method of accessing it. It should have been reintegrated as a sql query, showing only the updates from the last updated local index. I'm also reasonably certain that their SVN should be able to determine all of the updated files from their last download, and package only the updates files together, which would have drastically saved on bandwidth (since users would likely be downloading a 10k compressed Lua file instead of 3MB files full of images and static data files). Next, I would have programmed in the ability to publish any 'release' quality update to WoWInterface and Curse, directly from a web interface for the Developers. This reduces the reliance on using WowAce for distribution, and removes part of the laziness barrier that seems prevelent in many of the Developers. Honestly, the entire beauty of WowAce has now been completely removed. AddOn developers left to their own devices won't follow any revision control procedures, which is something that WowAce forced on developers. All of the other benefits of WowAce were incidental. Memory and CPU utilization were not always true, and the ease with which a Developer could be replaced on any specific AddOn was indeed much smoother than the alternatives on Curse and WowInterface (which created situations where we had several terms such as Reborn, Renewed, Refreshed, 2.0, or II, all in circulation simultaneously).