Is Cursive getting too complex?

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Kikuli Kokuli

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Mar 26, 2017, 11:04:05 AM3/26/17
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I'm on the latest IDEA and the latest whatever-version-of-Cursive-IDEA-gives-me, and basically now it's close to unuseable for me because some indentations have mysteriously stopped working.

Judging by some of the threads in this group, it seems it's getting tricky to keep Cursive working correctly.

I've recently mailed Colin about some problem(s), but haven't heard back. Sure, he's probably busy and all, but I suppose being a paying customer warrants some sort of reaction.

I bet I'm not using even half of Cursive's features, mainly because I've never gotten used to the advanced kind of stuff you might find in emacs etc. Basically I've been using Cursive much like a text editor that supports Clojure's syntax, but right now it doesn't even manage that.

But is all that fancy stuff putting too much of a burden on Colin's ability to deliver working software? Don't get me wrong, he's clearly a very capable developer. But sometimes too much is just too much :)

This is a "fake account" for YouTube btw, so I might not end up reading replies to this. But I wanted to put this out there anyway, just in case it's useful to someone.

Timothy Baldridge

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Mar 26, 2017, 1:30:30 PM3/26/17
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I haven't had any such problems, but I use paredit, and it seems that many people who complain here are using parnifer?


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Colin Fleming

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Mar 26, 2017, 6:30:39 PM3/26/17
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I received two emails from you with a bug report/complaint 3am on Sunday night/Monday morning and then another at 3:25am. I don’t have a formal SLA for support response, but if I ever do instate one it won’t be “less than 8 hours response time on Sunday nights”. If you feel that’s inappropriate for a product that you’ve paid $100 or $200 for, I’m happy to refund your money and I wish you luck in your search for a tool provider with the SLAs you require.

I previously received one email from you at 23:16 on Friday night my time, which seems to have been for a different problem. I hadn’t responded to that one over my weekend because, like the others, it was basically a “this doesn’t work” type report. I need more information to be able to have any hope of giving you any sort of useful answer. Until now (Monday morning) I probably put about as much thought into reading your email as you did into writing it.

As far as Cursive’s stability, no-one really knows. I don’t have the feeling that it’s suddenly becoming unusable, perhaps I’m wrong. Bear in mind that a couple of dozen people tend to send mail here, tops, and Cursive has around 15k users. Very few people have written to the group saying “Cursive is totally stable, everything is fine”, but that doesn’t mean that that isn’t the case for most users.

It is true that Cursive is a large, complex product, and realistically it is too big for one person. JetBrains have a team of 15 working on PyCharm. But they also have half a million users, so they have more resources to pay for that team. Again, if this makes Cursive unsustainable for you, I’m happy to refund your money. If all you want is a text editor supporting Clojure, you could try Atom with Proto-REPL, which looks lovely. If, instead, you would just like things in Cursive to get fixed, then I encourage you to write bug reports that actually give me some hope of identifying the problem.



Rangel Spasov

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Mar 26, 2017, 7:36:31 PM3/26/17
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I can't tell if your post is needlessly passive aggressive or subversively malicious. 

Everything that you've said here contributes nothing towards even a hope of solving your issue.

"some indentations"
Specifics, details? When did it start, after an upgrade, or any action? Even if you don't remember a speculation is worth a shot.

"Judging by some of the threads" 
Against, any specifics? There's always complaints about a lot of things by some people in all kinds of software.  

"haven't heard back"
Total misrepresentation and exaggeration of your previous communications. 

"kind of stuff you might find in emacs etc"
Pointless comparisons to other software. Over the years a number of very well respected people in the Clojure community have made the leap to Cursive because of the great features and overall stability. It clearly works for them. 

I personally have been using Cursive for years and while not perfect the stability has generally been excellent since the early alphas and has been getting better for me in the last year - I have worked on over to a dozen of at least medium-size projects/codebases, both Clojure and ClojureScript.

And on top of all of that, you plainly state that this is a "fake account" that you don't even care to read if someone were to offer a solution. 

It seems to me that you don't care about fixing your issue and you're just a troll. 

Kikuli Kokuli

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Mar 26, 2017, 8:57:44 PM3/26/17
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On Monday, March 27, 2017 at 8:36:31 AM UTC+9, Rangel Spasov wrote:
I can't tell if your post is needlessly passive aggressive or subversively malicious. 

At first I thought you were referring to Colin's post, which actually warranted a reaction like that, but .. alright :P
 

Kikuli Kokuli

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Mar 26, 2017, 9:14:32 PM3/26/17
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On Monday, March 27, 2017 at 7:30:39 AM UTC+9, Colin Fleming wrote:
I received two emails from you with a bug report/complaint 3am on Sunday night/Monday morning and then another at 3:25am. I don’t have a formal SLA for support response, but if I ever do instate one it won’t be “less than 8 hours response time on Sunday nights”. If you feel that’s inappropriate for a product that you’ve paid $100 or $200 for, I’m happy to refund your money and I wish you luck in your search for a tool provider with the SLAs you require.

Now if you only had started from the assumption that I'm not a stupid twat, then maybe you would have responded without the passive-aggression there.


 
I previously received one email from you at 23:16 on Friday night my time, which seems to have been for a different problem. 
I hadn’t responded to that one over my weekend because, like the others, it was basically a “this doesn’t work” type report. I need more information

Yes, this was the experience that I remembered. You've asked for more information now, after I made a bit of a fuss here. You should have done that earlier.


 
I probably put about as much thought into reading your email as you did into writing it.

Oh so it's my fault that you weren't able to muster the effort needed to ask if the "align let-binding values" -setting was on! Got it.

This isn't the right kind of tone for this discussion, but I didn't start it.


 
As far as Cursive’s stability, no-one really knows. I don’t have the feeling that it’s suddenly becoming unusable, perhaps I’m wrong.

Apparently most people are doing fine, but at this moment, it is practically unuseable for me. I have no idea how things can turn out this way, but that's the current situation. That wasn't meant as a jab at you btw :P


 
Bear in mind that a couple of dozen people tend to send mail here, tops, and Cursive has around 15k users. Very few people have written to the group saying “Cursive is totally stable, everything is fine”, but that doesn’t mean that that isn’t the case for most users.

Right, people generally report it when everything is fine. It's understandable.

 

It is true that Cursive is a large, complex product, and realistically it is too big for one person. JetBrains have a team of 15 working on PyCharm. But they also have half a million users, so they have more resources to pay for that team. Again, if this makes Cursive unsustainable for you, I’m happy to refund your money.

If Cursive is "too big for one person", that might make it unsustainable for everyone, you know. Note that I'm not claiming it is. It's just that my recent experiences made me wonder whether that might be the case.

I just want to be able to use IDEA for working with Clojure code. That's what Cursive has enabled, and it's mostly worked fine. 

 

I encourage you to write bug reports that actually give me some hope of identifying the problem.

Please just ask for whatever information you need.



Ravindra Jaju

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Mar 26, 2017, 11:07:03 PM3/26/17
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On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 6:44 AM, Kikuli Kokuli <kikkaku...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, March 27, 2017 at 7:30:39 AM UTC+9, Colin Fleming wrote:
I received two emails from you with a bug report/complaint 3am on Sunday night/Monday morning and then another at 3:25am. I don’t have a formal SLA for support response, but if I ever do instate one it won’t be “less than 8 hours response time on Sunday nights”. If you feel that’s inappropriate for a product that you’ve paid $100 or $200 for, I’m happy to refund your money and I wish you luck in your search for a tool provider with the SLAs you require.

Now if you only had started from the assumption that I'm not a stupid twat, then maybe you would have responded without the passive-aggression there.

I'm generally not someone who responds, but here I couldn't stop myself. I think what you've written is sad, if not hilarious. A 'fake' account writing something harsh isn't passive-aggressive, but Colin's offer to refund is passive-aggressive? Please!

Requiring "more information" shouldn't be a follow-up, but rather part of the first "bug report" if you ask me. Even if I pay, it's very unfair to ask someone to write back an obvious "Sorry about your experience, can I have some more traces/logs please" because that's wasted time for everyone, and definitely not a fair expectation at the price-points we are talking (I apologize for bringing in the price aspect - but that's what I see being alluded to when referring to Cursive as a 'paid product with expected SLAs etc.) And to be very fair, Colin usually still ends up doing that - asking for more information - patiently.

Offering constructive suggestions or asking for clarifications on faster support, level of support, SLA clarifications etc. is fair game, but when you start with "latest IDEA and the latest whatever-version-of-Cursive-IDEA-gives-me", I immediately got a feeling of a rant following. At the very least, a proper request for help would have a much gentler tone, and enough effort put in to specify version numbers (even if that were stupidly obvious).

I'm also on the "latest IDEA and the latest whatever-version-of-Cursive-IDEA-gives-me" and I usually tend to be on the "latest IDEA and the latest whatever-version-of-Cursive-IDEA-gives-me" because that's how I am, and I've been able to work with Cursive just fine.

My 2 cents. Please do reconsider changing how you converse, especially on a public forum. I may be wrong, but at least until now, I haven't seen anyone come up in support of your style.

Thanks,
jaju

Colin Yates

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Mar 27, 2017, 4:53:53 AM3/27/17
to cur...@googlegroups.com, Colin Fleming
Can we kill this thread now please - I am not sure the original email
or some of the responses reflect the maturity and integrity we
(Clojure and Cursive) communities generally have. Slippery slope....
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Kikuli Kokuli

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Mar 27, 2017, 8:59:46 AM3/27/17
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Without dignifying your post with a proper response, because it doesn't deserve one, I'll just point out that my original message did not warrant any snarkiness or passive aggression, and there's nothing wrong with me responding in kind to the hostility that came my way.

This is something like a customer support forum for Cursive, and I sure didn't expect the author of a paid product to essentially stir up a flame-war with a customer.. and some psychopath(s) chiming in from the sidelines to further poison the conversation is something that shouldn't be happening here either.

Perhaps some kind of alternative arrangement would be in order. Unless, of course, this actually is a perfect match for the spirit of Cursive / Ideogram.

Colin Fleming

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Mar 27, 2017, 2:18:05 PM3/27/17
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I agree with Colin’s assessment - we’re done here. I’ve blocked this user from posting further - calling other users “psychopaths” is over the line.
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