I'm just curious, user Tortferngatr, where do you get off posting ultimatums about the development of software to which you have contributed exactly
nothing? Your post is completely absurd. This may come as a surprise to you, but I don't get paid to develop pokemon simulators, and neither do bearzly or Super (the last of whom has put in the most time lately because bearzly and I spend the majority of our days doing programming that we
do get paid for).
The whole concept of your post illustrates a serious delusion about how volunteer programming actually works. Unfortunately, you aren't the only one labouring under this delusion. I have seen comments evincing a similar mindset from other people as well. So for everybody's benefit, let's dispel some myths right now.
Myth 1: Smogon has "programming resources".
I see this one all the time. Sometimes ideas will be shut down because the proposed idea isn't a good use of Smogon's "programming resources". Sometimes people will talk about putting the call out to Smogon's "programming resources". Sometimes people will suggest that such and such can easily be taken care of by Smogon's "programming resources". You, user Tortferngatr, suggest that Smogon's "programming resources" "move on" to a new project.
It is as though the people saying this imagine that Smogon has a team of programmers whom it can direct to work on whatever project is judged to be the most important at the time. This worldview is patently wrong and originates almost exclusively with non-programmers who nevertheless like to weigh in on programming implementation.
Smogon is not an employer and it does not send out cheques. There are some people who
happen to participate in Smogon in their free time who by coincidence
are also programmers, but they will work on the simulator, or a Smogon-related project, if and only if the project personally interests them.
Smogon does not have programming resources. None of the volunteer developers do work for Smogon because they were directed to. They do work that benefits Smogon because the work itself interests them. If it did not interest them,
they wouldn't do it. There are dozens of large free and open source projects on the Internet that a capable programmer could contribute to instead if that project interested her. Or perhaps she would just make a new project entirely: programmers love to design new frameworks. Why do you think Pokemon Online was made in the first place rather than just helping us finish Shoddy Battle 2? Surprise: it's because programmers do whatever they enjoy, and nothing else, unless they're being paid, and
we do not get paid to do this. Programming isn't inherently fun. That's why naive reasoning about programming hours
just doesn't work.
So please, let's refrain from talking about Smogon's "programming resources" in the future. It is a myth that masks the fact that the decisions of what to implement are made individually by people who could be capable of doing it, and the only criterion those people use is whether implementing that thing will be enjoyable. Individual programmers will comment on whether they want to implement something. There are no higher orders on this, either from you, user Tortferngatr, or from anybody else on Smogon.
Myth 2: Conceptually, a program can be visualised as requiring a particular number of developer hours to complete. A developer can choose to invest Y hours of her time in any particular program, and doing so will reduce the remaining time to completion of that program by Y hours.
This is false
even if the programmers are being paid, because it ignores the time to set up a new developer on a codebase, or the time required each session to become productive. For example, a programmer might require an hour in a given session before she actually starts writing code, and this time is not a ratio of the length of the session.
However, these reasons are not the main point here. The main point is that volunteer programmers cannot simply be assigned to some project and left to chip away at it. The reality is that they will work on what they find interesting. If that can't be found on Smogon, they will not work on any programming projects related to Smogon.
It bears repeating that none of the Shoddy Battle developers receives any compensation for the over a thousand hours of developer hours we have collectively invested over the last three years. Programming is work. It has to be enjoyable to do for free. That's why you see so many people duplicating the efforts of other projects, because they find it more interesting to play with their own design, and being interesting is
all that matters when we aren't being paid. That's why you won't see Shoddy Battle merging with Pokemon Online. I've already invested a lot into my codebase and framework design and I think it's better than the Pokemon Online design. Similarly, the Pokemon Online people must have thought their design was better than mine, or they would not have started their own project. Bottom line: volunteer programming time investment is more complicated than naive reasoning about developer hours suggests.
Myth 3: Users of the software are entitled to new versions, new features, and speedy releases.
Shdody Battle is, always has been, and always will be free software: free as in freedom. Everybody has always been free to implement new features or whatever she wants. Indeed, current core development team member Super contributed his first patches
completely on his own with no outside help.
You can too. If you want something done, and you find it interesting, then the perfect person to do it is YOU. Unless, of course, you happen to convince me or bearzly or Super that it's interesting, but that's easier said than done. Or you could send us money to convince us it's interesting if you don't want to implement it yourself. Either way, what you need to take away from this is that we will work on exactly those things that we personally think are worth working on, because we don't get paid to do this.
We don't get anything if there are three quarters of a million battles played per month on our simulator. It's the case, but it doesn't translate into any funds for us. For some programmers, their definition of interesting may include "drawing more people to the program", but that's not everybody's. I understand that most posts asking for a release date are good natured people simply interested in our progress. I appreciate that kind of interest.
However, occasionally we get posts like yours, user Tortferngatr, demonstrating a mysterious sense of entitlement for software which is developed in the free time of a small number of programmers (all three of whom are full time students, and two of whom have had full time jobs for the summer), and which is distributed free of cost,
and which is distributed with the source code under a licence that allows
you to modify the code, study it, even release your own version
if you want. Bottom line: if you want to be
entitled to something, contact me to arrange a financial transaction. Otherwise,
contribute yourself or, if you don't
want to (awfully hypocritical of you though, considering you seem to expect us to want to do whatever you say, within your arbitrary time limits), then you can wait patiently and politely.
Myth 4: Shoddy Battle 2 is a black box about which only a privileged few have details.
You don't state this explicitly, but your comments about "cancelling" the project reveal this misunderstanding.
The reality is the source code for Shoddy Battle 2 is and always has been available, at our
source code repository. If you want to know about the progress of the program, or what features are included, by all means, go ahead and take a look. If you take a look, you will also notice that the current codebase is some 40,000 lines of code between the three components. That's an awful lot of code to "cancel".
***
What does this all mean?
Well, obviously I'm not suggesting that Smogon will stick on an outdated simulator forever. However, there's no rush. You can use whatever simulators you want any time you want. We don't care. But please spare us posting your ridiculous ultimatums and demands. You are entitled to nothing. If you want the work done faster, you can do some of it. If you'd rather use another program, you can do that instead.
It also means that if you aren't writing code yourself, don't comment on what is a good use of "programming resources" or not. And even if you are writing code, only comment on whether you personally are going to do it.
That all being said, I personally invested at least several hundred hours into Shoddy Battle 2 alone, and although I have very little free time these days (about three hours per day, and I need to do other, more important things), I intend to see this through to its first release.
