Written by Ram Rachum, developer of GarlicSim.
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Will give away firstborn son in exchange for feedback
I really need to get some feedback from GarlicSim users.
(Okay, I’m not going to trade away any future children for feedback, unless they grow up to be Java programmers.)
I released the first version of GarlicSim, numbered 0.1, about 8 months ago. Since then I’ve made several releases, and today we’re at GarlicSim 0.5. Over the time GarlicSim was available, I could see that it was downloaded a few hundred times, but I never spoke to one real user.
What do I mean by a “real user”?
I spoke to a few people who tried it out. A lot of people I showed it to said it’s really cool, and that’s always nice for me to hear. But I did not speak to one user who actually used GarlicSim in a real-life project. When I say “real-life project”, it doesn’t necessarily mean a project that you get money for, but any project in which GarlicSim was a means to an actual end. What I mean is, anything more than just trying GarlicSim out for trying’s sake. For example, I would really like to speak with a user who has written his own simpack.
Getting feedback is really really important, and it’s a top priority right now in the GarlicSim project. It’s quite possible that I’m working too much on the wrong things and neglecting the important things, and only feedback from real users can tell me which parts of GarlicSim are important and which aren’t.
I created a feedback form, but only one person filled it, and he was from the “just trying out” category.
I’m aware that GarlicSim is a young, experimental project, and people are hesitant to start basing their work on it. (Especially given that it’s a framework and not a library.) The thing is, I can’t even know if there exist any real users of GarlicSim yet! It’s quite probable that they exist but just stay quiet, as the vast majority of users do.
If any real GarlicSim users out there are reading this: Please talk to me. You can fill the feedback form. Or you can send me an email. You can say hello on the mailing list. And give me any feedback you have. Ask questions. Give criticism. Tell me why GarlicSim sucks, tell me it’s a piece of crap, tell me I’m a terrible programmer and I should have my Python programming license revoked. Just tell me something.
And if you never tried GarlicSim: Why not give it a try? In 25 minutes you could grasp the fundamentals of GarlicSim and write your first simpack! And after that, please tell me what you think!
