Alternatice UI

[Cerebus]

So making something cross-platform is very noble an probably more a (50-60s style) ideology, it's just not practical.

  

In the 50s and 60s cross-platform wasn't even an idea, if you got a new computer, often even from the same manufacturer, you expected to have to re-write all your software. The idea of backward/upward compatibility within the same manufacturer's range didn't exist until the mid 60s, cross platform compatibility wasn't even on the cards.

And of course cross-platform is completely practical, if you know what you're doing. I used to look after four of the ports of an expert systems tool that ran on DOS, Windows, Vax VMS, SunOS, AIX, Apollo Domain and CTOS, so obviously I haven't a clue what I'm talking about. We managed to do that in the days (late 80s) when there weren't cross-platform toolkits to make the job easier (as there clearly are now) and working on a codebase that was originally written in FORTRAN with no regard to portability beyond DOS that used all sorts of hardware/OS 'tricks' that had to be re-engineered. If we (a small software house with two full-time developers) could practically manage to do it then, and get multiple platform products out of the door and working, then nowadays it ought to be a doddle in comparison.

Excuses for not doing cross-platform software development start with inexperience, and passes through a lot of other in- words like indifference, and in the worst cases ship up at incompetence. If I (not a superhuman coder) have managed to do it, others can.

[b_force]

So making something cross-platform is very noble an probably more a (50-60s style) ideology, it's just not practical.

In the 50s and 60s cross-platform wasn't even an idea,

I was referring to the (pre) cold war and such, but I guess some people still live in the fairy tail of ideologies.
My apologies.

Obviously cross-platform wasn't a thing back than.


But yes, I do agree that something can only work if people know what they are doing
But at this moment I am a little confused, because it isn't a good EDA, nor a nice interface to work with.
So maybe they just wanted to make a cross-platform program, and we are all fooled believing it was a EDA? 

[pointhi]

Thats not how it would work with KiCad. >50% of main devs are Linux users to my knowledge, thus if one OS would be dropped, it would be Windows.

While KiCad is competing against propertiary software, its main focus is as with many OSS projects not to extend the userbase as far as possible (there is no revenue to increase), but serve their existing userbase (many OSS and OSH people, also mainly running Linux, who also make many of the contributions).

What is helping KiCad are people and companies who contribute to its development. From what I see, KiCad now comes into the range where there is momentum from companies starting to invest into its development, to serve their usecases better. This in turn improves the software for everyone and makes it interesting for more users and companies to help with its development.

While KiCad competes with other EDA vendors, the huge difference is that KiCad is a tool which can be used and improved by everyone, and not a product which is sold for an anual fee. Like with Blender or Linux, companies can cooporate in tool development while competing with their products. This reduces costs in the long term and increases quality, because you are not dependent on some nice company response. I think, this principle can create a momentum. Focusing on Windows would on the other hand reduce it drastically because the projects would loose developers (for example, I would not contribute to it if it would be Windows only).

[b_force]

This reduces costs in the long term and increases quality,

Ehm no that is not how it works.
It reduces "maybe" some costs short term.

A free program doesn't mean reducing costs.
Reducing costs would be making a program that is so easy to work with, without any bugs and a rock solid customer support to help you immediately when heaving issues with it.

And leaving a potential project just because it's not 100% your favorite flavor, sorry, I find that very silly and very unprofessional.
Than you're also only looking at short term goals.

[Cerebus]

And leaving a potential project just because it's not 100% your favorite flavor, sorry, I find that very silly and very unprofessional.
Than you're also only looking at short term goals.

That literally doesn't make any sense. One cannot leave something that is only a potential project. Unprofessional implies professional, which implies getting paid and we're talking about a largely volunteer effort. The last sentence makes no sense in its context, or possibly because of its context, even after correcting the typo.

I'm not making a rhetorical cry of "Nonsense!", I'm talking about literal nonsense as I, at least, can't work out what you're actually trying to say (based on a working assumption that what you're trying to say makes sense, even if people might disagree with it).

[Cerebus]

so obviously I haven't a clue what I'm talking about. We managed to do that in the days (late 80s) when there weren't cross-platform toolkits to make the job easier

I would hazard a guess that your ports used native paradigms? For instance, had Windows been around then you would have used the OS-supplied open/save dialogs rather than a roll-your-own that was ported to all supported platforms?

A bit of both - native where we could, a common look-and-feel for end user applications developed in the expert systems shell. It was possible to write interactive applications inside the expert systems shell - we opted to keep these looking the same on different platforms, so that customer applications would look familiar to them whether they were running them on DOS for broadly distributed applications or an expensive workstation for applications with truly heavy inference engine loads.

Code wise, it was mostly a thin adaption layer to native methods for things like open/save dialogues and windows for the 'programmer's UI' which was mostly a set of built in text and form editors for inference rules, frames (a paradigm for some expert/AI systems at the time) and a limited procedural language mostly associated with scripting user interaction. A surprisingly big library to deal with OS basics including read and writing files, and our own graphics library for the 'application UI'.  That lot all got retargetted at the different back-ends but kept us making the same internal calls so that the core product was (in theory) code identical on all platforms. There was a lot of back-and-forth manual version control between the 'non-DOS' code and the 'DOS' code that got better over time as we back-ported the 'non-DOS' interfaces to the DOS code and the VMS code (which in modern version control terms had its own branch).

Windows 2.0 was around, and it was this we targetted for the initial Windows port, even selling a few copies, knowing that Windows 3.0 was on its way and (correctly) predicting that it would be a "big thing" (we had early access to Windows 3.0  and it was generally released near the end of my sojourn there). We had an unreleased part working OS/2 port too.

It was difficult. messy, but educational.

[PlainName]

OK, thanks

[pointhi]

This reduces costs in the long term and increases quality,

Ehm no that is not how it works.
It reduces "maybe" some costs short term.

You clearly misread this comment. Let's say an Altium licence costs 5.000$, and you have 10 seats. To replace your Altium seats with KiCad you need feature X, Y, Z,... (better routing tools, length-matching, etc.) which in turn requires, lets say, 2 man years in development time. This costs you for some time significantly more than Altium, but after that time you can, for example, go down to 5.000$ donations to KiCad each year to support development, instead of 50.000$ towards Altium. If there is a second company with similar requirements/goals, you can split the costs, and this scales quite well with enough interest from commercial side. Exemplary, Blender employs 20 developer out of regular donations.

And leaving a potential project just because it's not 100% your favorite flavor, sorry, I find that very silly and very unprofessional.
Than you're also only looking at short term goals.

That literally doesn't make any sense. One cannot leave something that is only a potential project. Unprofessional implies professional, which implies getting paid and we're talking about a largely volunteer effort. The last sentence makes no sense in its context, or possibly because of its context, even after correcting the typo.

Cerebus is right. I'm 100% Linux users, and I would have never started using a Windows only tool therefore, even less contributing to one. I would instead work on pcb_rnd, LibrePCB or Horizon now if KiCad was not there.

[ebastler]

You clearly misread this comment.

Or maybe you miswrote it. 

[b_force]

And leaving a potential project just because it's not 100% your favorite flavor, sorry, I find that very silly and very unprofessional.
Than you're also only looking at short term goals.

That literally doesn't make any sense. One cannot leave something that is only a potential project. Unprofessional implies professional, which implies getting paid and we're talking about a largely volunteer effort. The last sentence makes no sense in its context, or possibly because of its context, even after correcting the typo.

I'm not making a rhetorical cry of "Nonsense!", I'm talking about literal nonsense as I, at least, can't work out what you're actually trying to say (based on a working assumption that what you're trying to say makes sense, even if people might disagree with it).

Professional also means "of high quality".
You can still act and work on an unpaid project, as if it's actually a professional product, even if that is based on a volunteer effort.
The size of KiCad is obviously a little bit more than taking care of goats at your local animal shelter, so I think you can also expect such professionalism.

[Cerebus]

Your context would seem to imply 'professional' in the sense of 'professional ethics' but the whole thing is so confused I can't be sure of that. You then confound that by talking about 'professional quality'. I'm simply asking you to put your ideas down in cogent form, not a mishmash, so that we can get what you're trying to say. Then we'll have some opportunity to either agree with you or dispute you.

[Cerebus]

You clearly misread this comment.

Or maybe you miswrote it. 

Indeed, it certainly wasn't clear to me that he was talking about the commercially supported mode/model that he clearly is talking about. I like to think that my English Comprehension skills are quite good (used to get top marks for that at school) but I'm having great difficulty trying to follow the arguments of some of the people in this thread.

[b_force]

This reduces costs in the long term and increases quality,

Ehm no that is not how it works.
It reduces "maybe" some costs short term.

You clearly misread this comment. Let's say an Altium licence costs 5.000$, and you have 10 seats. To replace your Altium seats with KiCad you need feature X, Y, Z,... (better routing tools, length-matching, etc.) which in turn requires, lets say, 2 man years in development time. This costs you for some time significantly more than Altium, but after that time you can, for example, go down to 5.000$ donations to KiCad each year to support development, instead of 50.000$ towards Altium. If there is a second company with similar requirements/goals, you can split the costs, and this scales quite well with enough interest from commercial side. Exemplary, Blender employs 20 developer out of regular donations.

And leaving a potential project just because it's not 100% your favorite flavor, sorry, I find that very silly and very unprofessional.
Than you're also only looking at short term goals.

That literally doesn't make any sense. One cannot leave something that is only a potential project. Unprofessional implies professional, which implies getting paid and we're talking about a largely volunteer effort. The last sentence makes no sense in its context, or possibly because of its context, even after correcting the typo.

Cerebus is right. I'm 100% Linux users, and I would have never started using a Windows only tool therefore, even less contributing to one. I would instead work on pcb_rnd, LibrePCB or Horizon now if KiCad was not there.

yes, and now take the same look at the wages and hourly rate, because these engineers don't work for free.

10 engineers will cost you at least 700k to 1 million a year (that's on the low side).
That $50000 is not even a significant amount, especially not being spread over multiple years.
For one year that is around 8% compared to the wages (and that is assuming you have ONLY engineers working)
Also even deductible from taxes etc. that will go down to maybe 2-3% of the total costs.
Other technical costs like equipment and prototyping not included.

Not even considering the lack of trust in a specific piece of software, and all financial damages or worse (failing products).
Even with all the bugs involved, Altium has a proven record, if I call them today they will sort things out with me.

On top of that those engineers have many many years of experience in the software they are using.
To get them up to the same level (assuming we can convince them easily, which is not going to be an easy case), that would also take at least half a year to a year.
Assuming the alternative (KiCad in this case) has all the same qualities (which currently is very far from it).
So that will cost me another 200k-400k, time being put in teaching those engineers.
That's quit some years of paid licenses without running all the other risks.

The only use case I see for KiCad is for small companies, if they change the GUI at least.
With maybe just one or two engineers, producing 2-5 new designs or iterations a year of (very) simple designs (full board and old design conversions don't work on KiCad, tried many times)
But my experience is that these people also need a GUI that is much more usable.
They don't have the time to just make any mistake because it's all on them, so they naturally select something they are familiar with or at least feels familiar.
That's either Eagle, Altium, or something that feels similar like Protel 99
At these companies there is no or very little budget for taking courses, or spending a lot of time (with all the risks involved) to swap to a totally new program.

For this reason, I see a lot more in something like Diptrace, because it feels and looks very familiar.

[b_force]

Your context would seem to imply 'professional' in the sense of 'professional ethics' but the whole thing is so confused I can't be sure of that. You then confound that by talking about 'professional quality'. I'm simply asking you to put your ideas down in cogent form, not a mishmash, so that we can get what you're trying to say. Then we'll have some opportunity to either agree with you or dispute you.

I think my context is very clear if you look for people who have knowledge and skills to perform a task a make a good working product.
A good skilled professional engineer would be capable to put his own opinions aside and still finish his task.
Even if he doesn't agree fully with everything.

Like I said cross-platform is nothing more than a noble ideology (which I am even big fan of btw!!), just not reality and especially shouldn't be high on a list of priorities if you want to make a good working product.

I have absolutely no idea why I have to explain that over and over again and people being silly of the choosing of words.

[Cerebus]

yes, and now take the same look at the wages and hourly rate, because these engineers don't work for free.

10 engineers will cost you at least 700k to 1 million a year (that's on the low side).
That $50000 is not even a significant amount, especially not being spread over multiple years.
For one year that is around 8% compared to the wages (and that is assuming you have ONLY engineers working)
Also even deductible from taxes etc. that will go down to maybe 2-3% of the total costs.
Other technical costs like equipment and prototyping not included.

Not even considering the lack of trust in a specific piece of software, and all financial damages or worse (failing products).
Even with all the bugs involved, Altium has a proven record, if I call them today they will sort things out with me.

On top of that those engineers have many many years of experience in the software they are using.
To get them up to the same level (assuming we can convince them easily, which is not going to be an easy case), that would also take at least half a year to a year.
Assuming the alternative (KiCad in this case) has all the same qualities (which currently is very far from it).
So that will cost me another 200k-400k, time being put in teaching those engineers.
That's quit some years of paid licenses without running all the other risks.

The only use case I see for KiCad is for small companies, if they change the GUI at least.
With maybe just one or two engineers, producing 2-5 new designs or iterations a year of (very) simple designs (full board and old design conversions don't work on KiCad, tried many times)
But my experience is that these people also need a GUI that is much more usable.
They don't have the time to just make any mistake because it's all on them, so they naturally select something they are familiar with or at least feels familiar.
That's either Eagle, Altium, or something that feels similar like Protel 99
At these companies there is no or very little budget for taking courses, or spending a lot of time (with all the risks involved) to swap to a totally new program.

For this reason, I see a lot more in something like Diptrace, because it feels and looks very familiar.

So your argument seems to be that KiCad is an irrelevance and that people should just use Eagle/Altium/Protel/Diptrace 'because economics and first mover advantages'. Why then are you even debating in a thread that, in essence, is "the KiCad UI needs improving"?

[Cerebus]

A good skilled professional engineer would be capable to put his own opinions aside and still finish his task.

No, a paid engineer can just "shut up, do your job and take the money", a volunteer is only going to volunteer for things he feels worthwhile and agrees with. 

[b_force]

yes, and now take the same look at the wages and hourly rate, because these engineers don't work for free.

10 engineers will cost you at least 700k to 1 million a year (that's on the low side).
That $50000 is not even a significant amount, especially not being spread over multiple years.
For one year that is around 8% compared to the wages (and that is assuming you have ONLY engineers working)
Also even deductible from taxes etc. that will go down to maybe 2-3% of the total costs.
Other technical costs like equipment and prototyping not included.

Not even considering the lack of trust in a specific piece of software, and all financial damages or worse (failing products).
Even with all the bugs involved, Altium has a proven record, if I call them today they will sort things out with me.

On top of that those engineers have many many years of experience in the software they are using.
To get them up to the same level (assuming we can convince them easily, which is not going to be an easy case), that would also take at least half a year to a year.
Assuming the alternative (KiCad in this case) has all the same qualities (which currently is very far from it).
So that will cost me another 200k-400k, time being put in teaching those engineers.
That's quit some years of paid licenses without running all the other risks.

The only use case I see for KiCad is for small companies, if they change the GUI at least.
With maybe just one or two engineers, producing 2-5 new designs or iterations a year of (very) simple designs (full board and old design conversions don't work on KiCad, tried many times)
But my experience is that these people also need a GUI that is much more usable.
They don't have the time to just make any mistake because it's all on them, so they naturally select something they are familiar with or at least feels familiar.
That's either Eagle, Altium, or something that feels similar like Protel 99
At these companies there is no or very little budget for taking courses, or spending a lot of time (with all the risks involved) to swap to a totally new program.

For this reason, I see a lot more in something like Diptrace, because it feels and looks very familiar.

So your argument seems to be that KiCad is an irrelevance and that people should just use Eagle/Altium/Protel/Diptrace 'because economics and first mover advantages'. Why then are you even debating in a thread that, in essence, is "the KiCad UI needs improving"?

No that is clearly not my argument.

My argument is that if you want to at least people to use it, you should make the transition of what they now use as smooth as possible.
A proper graphical user interface is a very important step in that process.
It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Once you have people on board, THAN you can move to these other things and add or change features.
That's is just simply a matter of priorities.

[b_force]

A good skilled professional engineer would be capable to put his own opinions aside and still finish his task.

No, a paid engineer can just "shut up, do your job and take the money", a volunteer is only going to volunteer for things he feels worthwhile and agrees with. 

And people expect that they are going to agree on everything?
Good luck with finding volunteering jobs.

Like I said, I don't see a size project like KiCad as taking care of cute little goats on a farm.
So that automatically means you can expect some kind of responsibilities as well as professionalism.
In very similar volunteer projects, the only difference vs a paid job, is the fact that people can just leave whenever they want, have less time and are not being paid.
(although in certain countries paid people can also leave whenever they want)
I have even seen teams who work ten times more professional vs paid.

[Cerebus]

No that is clearly not my argument.

That may not be your argument, but it's not "clearly not [your] argument".

My argument is that if you want to at least people to use it, you should make the transition of what they now use as smooth as possible.
A proper graphical user interface is a very important step in that process.
It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Once you have people on board, THAN you can move to these other things and add or change features.
That's is just simply a matter of priorities.

Now that is clear. Why not just say that rather than all the circumperambulations around economics etc.?

I would, on that basis, disagree with your:

It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Most sane people's thesis is that all CAD software has crap user interfaces, KiCad being at least as bad, if not possibly worse, than the others. The argument is "let's make a decent user interface", not "let's copy or largely replicate a familiar (but still crap) user interface".

[Cerebus]

A good skilled professional engineer would be capable to put his own opinions aside and still finish his task.

No, a paid engineer can just "shut up, do your job and take the money", a volunteer is only going to volunteer for things he feels worthwhile and agrees with. 

And people expect that they are going to agree on everything?
Good luck with finding volunteering jobs.

Like I said, I don't see a size project like KiCad as taking care of cute little goats on a farm.
So that automatically means you can expect some kind of responsibilities as well as professionalism.
In very similar volunteer projects, the only difference vs a paid job, is the fact that people can just leave whenever they want, have less time and are not being paid.
(although in certain countries paid people can also leave whenever they want)
I have even seen teams who work ten times more professional vs paid.

What? Do you think that people are running around looking for volunteer jobs like they do paid jobs? One you need to live, the other you do because you agree with the aims and methods of the project your are volunteering for, or you don't volunteer for it.

It's not the bloody army - "I want three volunteers. You, you and you."  "Yes Sarge!" "Yes Sarge!" "Yes Sarge!". I'm beginning to suspect that you might be one of life's natural Second Lieutenants. 

[b_force]

No that is clearly not my argument.

That may not be your argument, but it's not "clearly not [your] argument".

My argument is that if you want to at least people to use it, you should make the transition of what they now use as smooth as possible.
A proper graphical user interface is a very important step in that process.
It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Once you have people on board, THAN you can move to these other things and add or change features.
That's is just simply a matter of priorities.

Now that is clear. Why not just say that rather than all the circumperambulations around economics etc.?

I would, on that basis, disagree with your:

It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Most sane people's thesis is that all CAD software has crap user interfaces, KiCad being at least as bad, if not possibly worse, than the others. The argument is "let's make a decent user interface", not "let's copy or largely replicate a familiar (but still crap) user interface".

I literally said all these things before.
The economics part is making people understand the why, and mostly the why as in; I am NOT talking about personal preference, but just facts.
I don't even like or agree with these facts, but unfortunately that is just how the world operates.
You as a tiny organisation (KiCad, and yes, relativity speaking it's a speck of dust) is not going to change that any time soon.

People, ESPECIALLY engineers, need to understand that their personal ideas (what I call ideologies) are subordinate to the bigger picture.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have them, or censor them, it means that if you want to have a successful product, you need to understand who or what you are battling against.
Just dumping something on peoples laps and expect them they are going to like it, doesn't work.
That is even more true with engineers.


About the interface; either be (much) better, or just copy.
Don't be as worse and totally different.
That's a lose-lose situation.
Especially when your only selling point left is that it's free.

My piece of advice, is diving into some books or lectures about peoples behavior, psychology and marketing etc.
And yes that is still applicable to free things. In the end you're s till competing one way or another.

[pointhi]

It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Most sane people's thesis is that all CAD software has crap user interfaces, KiCad being at least as bad, if not possibly worse, than the others. The argument is "let's make a decent user interface", not "let's copy or largely replicate a familiar (but still crap) user interface".

What is familiar? Eagle, KiCad, Target 3001!, Altium? Each of them has different UX principles and internal data models. I started with Target 3001! and found it nice to work with, then had to learn Eagle due to school and hated it in the beginning until I were able to make sensible results and quite a few PCB's. After that I went full OSS and had problems with the KiCad UI as well, until it made click and I understood the advantages of their UI design. (I'm no longer able to use Eagle productive, and find the UI of Target 3001! awful and old-school now though).

From what I have seen, there are people hating the UI of KiCad, I know people which prefer it over the one of Eagle and Altium. It's their preference, and those things are highly subjective. My opinion is it works already quite well, when you understood the basic principles it is a powerful UI, and with each major release there are notable improvements.

[Cerebus]

My piece of advice, is diving into some books or lectures about peoples behavior, psychology and marketing etc.
And yes that is still applicable to free things. In the end you're s till competing one way or another.

How delightfully patronising of you. I'd suggest that someone who lectures someone whose background they don't know about "diving into some books or lectures about peoples behavior, psychology and marketing etc" is more in need of instruction in how to handle the psychology of other people than anybody they might be lecturing.

I personally hate an argument from authority or argument from experience, but as I'm essentially being accused of naïvety and/or inexperience I think I'll permit myself to use one for once. I've spent nearly 45 years designing, programming, organizing, marketing and selling software and services (punctuated by a few years as a tech journalist), quite successfully I might add, with plenty of happy customers over the years. I've provided consultancy services to household names, served as a non-exec director on the board of a national trade body and on one of the advisory boards of another. What does your CV look like to put you in the position to lecture so?

Your problem is that you disagree with me, and you don't seem to know how to argue your point without resorting to an ad-hominem attack. Let's put aside the generally accepted principle that switching to ad-hominem means you've already lost your argument. On the balance of probabilities my professional experience, versus your inability to even martial an argument into proper paragraphs or get a verb to agree with the pronoun you're using, would seem to suggest that one of us is better placed to make a judgement than the other.

[b_force]

My piece of advice, is diving into some books or lectures about peoples behavior, psychology and marketing etc.
And yes that is still applicable to free things. In the end you're s till competing one way or another.

How delightfully patronising of you. I'd suggest that someone who lectures someone whose background they don't know about "diving into some books or lectures about peoples behavior, psychology and marketing etc" is more in need of instruction in how to handle the psychology of other people than anybody they might be lecturing.

I personally hate an argument from authority or argument from experience, but as I'm essentially being accused of naïvety and/or inexperience I think I'll permit myself to use one for once. I've spent nearly 45 years designing, programming, organizing, marketing and selling software and services (punctuated by a few years as a tech journalist), quite successfully I might add, with plenty of happy customers over the years. I've provided consultancy services to household names, served as a non-exec director on the board of a national trade body and on one of the advisory boards of another. What does your CV look like to put you in the position to lecture so?

Your problem is that you disagree with me, and you don't seem to know how to argue your point without resorting to an ad-hominem attack. Let's put aside the generally accepted principle that switching to ad-hominem means you've already lost your argument. On the balance of probabilities my professional experience, versus your inability to even martial an argument into proper paragraphs or get a verb to agree with the pronoun you're using, would seem to suggest that one of us is better placed to make a judgement than the other.

In some cultures it's actually seen as something positive and constructive instead, I guess not for others.
My bad if you see it so negative as "authority" instead of asking for clarification.
Ever thought of that?

No, my problem is that people mix up their personal believes with factual reality.
In combination with constantly nitpicking details that are totally not important for the discussion.
I have never been "short of arguments", and out of respect and professionality I would also never ever call people that way or use disrespectful words like ad-hominem etc.
Nor would I never say something about how they phrase things, or speak, especially if they aren't native speakers.
Apparently other people do including playing blame games

As an scientist and engineer, I would like to understand the reality to solve problems.
But apparently literature in other scientific fields doesn't count and are just ways to fill paper?

I rather would like to have a constructive conversation, where people try to understand each other points of view, instead of fighting them.
So instead of already thinking that something is BS, wonder why people are unhappy (with an user interface in this very specific example)
But in these kind of subjects that seems to be close to impossible.
Saying with a very similar background and experience.

So it's easy, if it can't be constructive, I will just leave it for what it is.
No offence from my side, people just have different opinions, no reason to be offended for something like this.

[Cerebus]

It doesn't have to be fancy and pretty, as long as it's similar and familiar with what people use.

Most sane people's thesis is that all CAD software has crap user interfaces, KiCad being at least as bad, if not possibly worse, than the others. The argument is "let's make a decent user interface", not "let's copy or largely replicate a familiar (but still crap) user interface".

What is familiar? Eagle, KiCad, Target 3001!, Altium? Each of them has different UX principles and internal data models. I started with Target 3001! and found it nice to work with, then had to learn Eagle due to school and hated it in the beginning until I were able to make sensible results and quite a few PCB's. After that I went full OSS and had problems with the KiCad UI as well, until it made click and I understood the advantages of their UI design. (I'm no longer able to use Eagle productive, and find the UI of Target 3001! awful and old-school now though).

From what I have seen, there are people hating the UI of KiCad, I know people which prefer it over the one of Eagle and Altium. It's their preference, and those things are highly subjective. My opinion is it works already quite well, when you understood the basic principles it is a powerful UI, and with each major release there are notable improvements.

Gah! The old "UIs are highly subjective" argument. No, they are not, not in first instance. UIs are good and bad by objective criteria, in the first instance. There's a whole body of work on UI usability that objectively quantifies how some are better and some are worse in terms of the effort applied by the user to get the UI to effect the results they are trying to achieve. At the next level, sure, which people prefer is subjective, but first and foremost surely must be measurements of effort, both in day-to-day use and in 'effort to learn'.

An example. The decision to put the menus on the Macintosh (and I'm talking 1984 here) at the top of the screen versus the top of the application window (à la Windows and other WIMP interfaces at the time) was driven by empirical research that people moved the mouse to a menu that stayed in the same absolute position on the screen much faster and more accurately than they did to a menu that was in a fixed relative position. At times I've used Macs and Windows side by side and, despite being much more familiar with Windows at the time, found this born out in experience, the Mac UI was faster to use.

Another example. The whole 'place a component' paradigm is wrong in most schematic capture packages. Set yourself a challenge, draw a simple schematic with pencil and paper. Then draw that schematic in both LTSpice and the schematic capture package of your choice, timing yourself. This is obviously only fair if you already know LTSpice as well as your chosen schematic capture package, but I suspect most folks do. My expectation is that you will complete the schematic in LTSpice faster. Why, because it makes the common 'place a resistor', 'place a capacitor' tasks fast and easy, most schematic capture packages make it harder. This is an objectively measurable difference and figure of merit.