Worst software update

Hi PowerPath ,

If you have specific examples of schematics or libraries that you feel have been broken for no reason, we do want to see them. Upload by zipping up your files and dragging here.

I can address some of your more general statements.

PowerPath said:

Please don't turn this excellent tool into nightmare.

Your wish is granted. Think of the (frustrating) changes you've seen to LTspice this way…

LTspice is an important (understatement that) tool used by our customers and sales teams. There is zero to negative motivation for the LTspice development team to turn it into a nightmare, as that would be beyond unwise. Let's address your comments based on this assumption utilizing a couple of simple logical puzzles…

Let's take the statement "function syntax…nonsense changes" and turn this assertion into a logic question: Is it a logical conclusion that the ADI would have an LTspice development team take a tool used to aid in the sale of 100s of millions of $US of ADI products and just blindly and allow that team to nonsensically change the syntax to break it? What would be the result of this? Amongst other results, I can say with 100% certainty, I would not be here right now answering this question right now, nor would I be here at all. So: LTspice team breaks LTspice for no reason; LTspice team no longer at ADI. Simple.

Now, let's pose a different question: Considering the aforementioned importance of LTspice to ADI, is it likely that all of the changes do have careful consideration and thought behind them; that each change has been implemented so that LTspice does not become obsolete, that it can grow as a tool to benefit our customers, and by extension, continue to be offered as an eminently powerful design and learning tool for students and hobbyists around the world? Is it also likely that ADI would only entrust a significant update of LTspice with engineers that have used LTspice at a deep level for decades, and are motivated to make it a better tool, based on that experience? 

PowerPath said:

What did you achieve by changing table function syntax ? this is only one example there plenty of example this type nonsense changes .

The loose syntax (loosened over decades) of LTspice made it less deterministic, less robust and slower? (Answer is “yes” to that rhetorical musing.)

The loose vs. tight syntax question has been posed since the beginning of language itself—though programmers tend to think they invented it in the age of computers, as if code is center of the language universe. Philosophical historical thoughts aside, I think we can axiomatically state that LTspice must be a tight syntax system, LTspice users value determinism, speed and robustness above poetic license. Loose syntax serves none of these goals, so there is no need to go down that path—but LTspice did go down that path, unfortunately. The recent changes to syntax have been a balance of tightening it up for future features, making it better now, and not breaking too much of what is out there. We may have not succeeded in that last one, but as you may have seen, many recent updates have re-allowed undocumented, possibly bad, behavior as we find out about it. This process has revealed many models that appeared to behave, but they actually did produce deterministic results. What is worse, an error telling you it won't work, or for LTspice to pretend to give an answer based on guesswork involving unclear syntax?

PowerPath said:

I don't understand why ADI is making LTspice  worse day by day which was once a beautiful simulation tool.

Convince me that curly braces were ever a beautiful solution to anything other than in a mathematics treatise. :-) Curly braces are an example of where LTspice allowed the use of curly braces where they were not needed or wanted. To users, they just became a fix for everything. Could go deeper into this, but you may have to simply accept that the improvements are… improvements.

Thank your for your time,

mike

I've installed the latest today and I've just coping with tons of errors the new version found in ie. Bordodynov library. Except the TABLE stuff those a real typos in pretty large quantities, indeed.

What could be an interesting improvement would be a functionality in the LTSpice's log window (where the bugs are shown with the line numbers) which will (upon clicking on that error line indicated) open given lib file at the specific line..

Like an option in settings to enter the path to an editor of choice, and calling it then such it opens at the specific line.

Not sure what's wrong with ADI engineers ,don't they test before releasing the new version?