Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5779746" data-attributes="member: 54877">Yes, this is basically it. That's why my suggestions were only examples thrown off the cuff, and Wightbred came up with probably a better idea almost immediately. I'll add to what he said above that another critical element is only using a limited number of hooks, though I guess that is part of picking the right ones.  If it helps, think of it almost straight, as a coat hook somewhere in a house. It can be done efficiently several ways. You mount some discrete hooks on the wall somewhere. You can buy a rack of hooks and mount it under the stairs. You can get a coat rack. And so forth. Those are potentially good, depending on exactly how the house is built (i.e. how the rest of the system comes together). With a good solution, you can hang coats on it, but also light jackets, scarfs, umbrellas, hats, and probably a few other things that it wasn't exactly designed for. (Good design often displays that characteristic. There may be three official things to hook onto the system, but if done well, the hook will probably have more widespread uses.) If you have a "hat rack" mounted such that you can't hang anything longer on it, it may work for you, but it is not a general purpose, flexible solution. Whereas, pure additive soultions are often that we just make something work. Hang your own coats in the hall closet, leave them on doorknobs and the backs of chairs when using them a lot, and when you have company, pile them all on the bed in the spare room. And if "coats" aren't all that important in the system, maybe you do that, and leave the modular options for something more pertinent.  What I see in a lot of the modular option discussions, though, are things like, "No one would ever entertain company with this system. So just forget all that." Or, "Just add something on; it will work just as well." Both of those are seldom true statements. (And it is fairly clear in context that some--but certainly nowhere near all--of these statements are thinly veiled code for, "I'd never do that, and haven't thought about what anyone else might do," or "I'm not planning on doing that, and if I do it will be all ad hoc," or some variation that really has nothing to do with whether the option is a good idea for the wider audience or not.) Better objections to a particular piece of modularity are things like, "if you do this, you'll have to have some flexibility here, when it would be better to have that flexiblity there." Don't build a trailer hitch such that you hardweld that little ball on it, when you can bolt it on instead and still have it work with pins. (And it doesn't matter how much the people who only want the ball straight scream about having to bolt it on occasionally, they are objectively wrong about welding it.) Or, "this way to get the flexibility is really unwieldy and trouble for what the flexibility buys us." Something like making 3.5 gestalt (as written) the default rules. Or, of course, "We can do better than that to get the same results with less cost, even though your idea is alright by itself."  People that are making the first set of objections aren't engaging in the modularity discussion at all, but attempting to kill it (whatever their intentions may be, pro, con, or indifferent).</blockquote>

Verification