Well the way I always saw it was this...Mike is so efficient a coder that every minute spared here chatting with us is a minute's worth of code not coded. I always in fact thought it different that Mike and Kier were here interacting with the community mostly because at most other software sites, talking to someone who has the final say in something does not happen often.
They only have so much time and they have already put a lot of it into posts of informative nature as well as entertaining the guests who frequent the site and software they created. I always wondered why Kier made most of the HYS posts but it was then that I put it together or so I think...why should both of the developers stop developing to talk about development? It is then that I realized something else, the simple fact that Mike acted the part of pilot behind the scenes while Kier informed and entertained to the attendance on the frontend of the flight(
which is probably along the same line of the reason why people wrongly assume Mike isn't ridiculously talented). While not here I would have to assume Kier and Mike are equals in the coding and design aspect of things each with their own specialties that they are aware of and use to the advent of having time better spent. I also then had to remind myself about how much they REALLY do.
To do that I looked at Brogans post count. He is completely on the frontend of things as far as I understand. With his ginormogantuan amount of posts, a huge percentage are informative content rich as far as guides and examples of code usage go and as far as I have seen it all pertains to xenforo.
If you take into account the amount of time Brogan must have spent contributing to the community and factor in that he hasn't covered every single bit of xf code
(yet lol) , you could probably imagine how much time Mike and Kier have spent are spending and if the trend continues will spend on developing this software and also how much time they must spend to test one semi-significant change before it even could be considered a release candidate you will see it the way I do. If you look at the low amount of bugs and the (as far as I am concerned) non existent serious bugs you can see that the people involved in this are proud of their work and it shows and they deserve the respect you would show to a complete stranger or your mother pending the level of self-respect you have as well as the level of respect you choose to address the general masses with.
I think in terms of tolerance...the tolerance or
GD&T of a given part can not be manufactured outside of one's manufacturing capabilities. In a perfect world every part of a whole order would be exactly uniform and proportionally equal in every way with no variance. In machining it is heat and erosion that is your problem and it will cause variance in an otherwise perfect world. In machining I can control that by adjusting the machine shaping the part therefor I adjust all the parts that make up the order therefor controlling the environment the part is being made in which ultimately allows me for almost complete control of the environment in which the parts are created so I can stay within tolerance be it +/- .001 or +0/-.0000050", it is math, it is cut and dry, and there IS ALWAYS a derivable answer immediately to a problem. What I have realized in the past many months while learning to code somewhat while being a guest here is that the web is a pain in the ass. There is standards that all browsers don't follow completely and uniformly and in some cases not at all, there are code libraries that constantly change and sometimes don't play nice with each other, and there is a billion and one other things that are not in your complete control because ultimately whatever you make has to be able to run on the average persons web browser so you can't just go off and create your own standard. Xf has been putting out a web server based product consistently for some time now that has the lowest tolerance for errors that I have ever put my hands on or used and I say that with complete and calculated confidence.
With all the things concerning the web that are out of a developers direct control what they have been doing in my opinion would be equivalent to me taking an imbalanced, non-lubricated, non-dressed machine with no coolant flow and running 500 parts straight in one process and each one being perfect in one cycle and holding +/-.0000001". For you that have no clue what I am talking about, it is equal to walking on water, all three are amazing feats, I just only know of one that has been done thus far.
I am sorry for the rant but I can cease now. Please continue everyone and don't mind me, I am having my own conversation here. I just wanted it known that I don't think any two other people can do what Kier and Mike are doing or they would have done it already. They are the reason the people who are talking here in this very thread are having this conversation, that's what we share in common, this software and this forum. In the end I don't care who has how much more talent than next one...because here things are team based so it doesn't really matter how strong one is against the next rather the total value when joined up. Either way I have much respect for everyone that contributes here none more so that Mike and Kier because I am a person who must respect anyone that takes pride in making a good honest living. It just so happens that they make a living making something I like so I happen to be a customer. They have done everything right up to this point and no matter what happens in my near future I will maintain the regard I hold them in and that goes the same to any other human who has also spoken to me as an equal and acts with purpose.
Like I said before, please continue.
