[Rxtx] NRJavaSerial, a fork of rxtx that fixes the papercuts!

[Steffen DETTMER]

* Jim Redman rxtx-bounces at qbang.org [mailto:rxtx-bounces at qbang.org] 
> Since these same people are the ones who won't read the 
> documentation, if the defined behavior differs from any users 
> expectation then you'll have people reporting bugs/support 
> requests against the behavior they expect.

I hope you do not suggest to write software in a way that less
educated people who do not read the documentation find their
expectations met?

I'm truely convinced a big part of Windows' and nowadays Linux'
reduced degree of reliability is that details were implemented
in the way as people reporting "bugs requesting the behavior
they expect" - without reading the documentation, understading
concepts or being qualified for such a kind of "decision".

If someone expects getApple() to return an Orange I think it is
really time to read the fine manual and adjust his expectation.
However, many vendors change getApple() to return an Orange
and call it "user friendly"... anyway.

If someone expects something complex where something simple
is sufficent, it is also reasonable to reconsider expectations.

> If you can force the behavior you want and still provide the 
> users the capability they need, they'll curse a little until 
> they discover how to achieve what they want (or in 
> desperation read the documentation), and then they'll be 
> happy that you provided a bug-free library.

As systems grow complexer and complexer, people not reading
documentation may not survive long term professional
development and may end up writing "Apps" or so, so maybe we
can safely wait until developers who do not read documentation
complete their own extinction :-)

(personally I think "people who do not read documentation"
and "developer" are disjunct. Developers read all the day.)

> That's a long winded way of saying what I said yesterday, if 
> you return a mutable object - and I'm not arguing that you 
> should or shouldn't - you should handle the (possibly 
> reasonable) expectation that the user will change the 
> returned object. A (possibly reasonable) expectation by the 
> user is that if you returned a mutable object, changing said 
> object will have some impact on the future behavior of the 
> application, which would not be the case with, say, a copy.

Yes, well said. I agree.

oki,

Steffen