[asterisk-users] Upgrade to Asterisk 1.4 - it's one year's old!

[Steve Totaro]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ira" <ira at extrasensory.com>
To: <dboyd at ignitetrx.com>; "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial 
Discussion" <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 2:50 PM
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Upgrade to Asterisk 1.4 - it's one year's old!


> At 10:14 AM 12/15/2007, you wrote:
>>So Digium, (I address the company since Tilghman now works for you) do
>>you have any plans to query the user community and determine what a
>>typical end user of the product needs? With the knowledge and skill that
>>exists in  your organization it would seem trivial to put something in
>>place to allow user feedback not only developer feedback for release
>>direction.
>>
>>My 2 cents, ok 25 cents,
>>Dave
>
> I have a somewhat different opinion. I once used a product where upon
> announcing the features of the next release to a rather disenchanted
> audience pointed out that the product now contained what you needed
> to get your job done, and not necessarily what you wanted. The people
> unwilling to learn walked away disappointed, those willing to think
> about what they'd been given were constantly surprised at the
> newfound capabilities of the product.  People always ask for stuff
> they don't need that they're unwilling to figure out how to do
> themselves. A perfect example is the new dial plan function array(),
> it has nothing to do with arrays, doesn't accomplish anything useful
> that couldn't have been done by allowing commas in set(), or calling
> it setmany(), and means if real arrays ever get added to the language
> we have to come up with new function names while the obvious one has
> already been taken to mean something not related.
>
> I know lots of people have thousands of hours in dial plans to solve
> specific problems, but personally I'd have no problem if the
> deprecated the whole dial plan script language and started over.
> Well, I'd be happy if they came up with an elegant language with
> functions, parameters and proper variable scoping while getting rid
> of line numbers and all the rest of the baggage that shouldn't have
> been there in the first place. AEL is an attempt to solve some of
> that, but as it's just a precompiler to the underlying language it
> has limitations that shouldn't be there.
>
> I'm sure that's not a popular opinion as people don't tend to like
> change, but in the long run it would make Asterisk a better product.
> Sadly it's probably already too late.
>
> I still cringe whenever I see people acknowledge line numbers in new 
> books.
>
> Ira

Then fork or "learn" how to re-write and submit your code for this "elegant 
language" you speak of and see how it flies.

Thanks,
Steve Totaro