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Old July 9th 18, 06:32 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
John Foster
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Posts: 354
Default Top Hat Question (XCSoar?)

On Friday, July 6, 2018 at 12:36:03 PM UTC-6, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Fri, 06 Jul 2018 08:54:40 -0700, chip.bearden wrote:

Based on my and other reported experiences, I think the best system is
whatever you are comfortable with and is reliable. I've seen problems
reported with a variety of hardware and software. I'm in the IT business
and it's amazing to me that this stuff works as well as it does given
the low volumes, whether it's commercial products like ClearNav or
freeware such as Top Hat/XCSoar.

I was also in the IT business, now retired. I think a major reason this
stuff works as well as it does is that the developers are (all?) also
active users of this stuff. That is not knocking professional developers,
just pointing out that they are seldom active users of what they write
and IMO this factor makes a huge difference, especially to usability and
GUI design.

I flew with XCSoar for a few years, but switched to LK8000 whe nit
appeared because I prefer its user interface, which took less effort to
set up the way I want it that XCSoar did, and on a good day with no
weather or airspace issues to force changes of plan I won't touch it from
launch to landing. I've looked at SYM but prefer LK8000.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org


I can't agree with you enough on this point you make about software developers who actually use their product in real everyday life! This applies not only to soaring, but in almost every aspect of software development, especially when it comes to electronic medical record systems. (sorry, don't mean to derail the thread here, but this is a pet peeve of mine).