[nzlug] developer cultures

[David McNab]

Hi folks,

I've been having some flamewars on #ffmpeg, and would like to solicit
some opinion from local developers.

I've put forward the argument that the ffmpeg APIs (libavcodec,
libavformat etc) are unnecessarily low-level, and could benefit strongly
from higher level C primitives (or even C++ classes) which abstract away
a lot of the 'red tape'.

I've offended the developers by suggesting that if libc were like
lavc/lavf, then it would take hundreds of lines to do an fopen().

Add to this the fact that lavc/lavf have no descriptive programmer
documentation (apart from some doxygen-generated comments), and
virtually no examples.

There's a clash of perception here. I'm currently in the mind-set of a
high-level app developer - I want to just *drive* the car, and not have
to take the engine and carburettor apart just to find the accelerator
pedal.

On the other hand, to those deeply in the lavf/lavc culture, I'm coming
across as a whingeing 'rad-tool weenie'.

So, for other devs here, particularly those who write some C, how do you
find the lavf/lavc API?

Cheers
David