Visvanath Ratnaweera

Dear Zabelle

I am deeply sorry! I didn't mean to offend you in any way. The phrase was supposed to be humorous, a "tongue in cheek" utterance. I learned a lesson, for the nth time, not to try to be funny with people you don't know.  

I know, it is too late. Still let me explain my train of thought behind that phrase. I thought you do not wish certain components and features of Moodle, that are known to overwhelm the novice - some I know first-hand from my beginning. It would have been much better for the novices and Moodle, if those components and features were not there. But the point is, the technology has its limitations. The web application platform behind Moodle, conventional PHP scripts, though object-oriented, enhanced with JavaScript, and the persistence looked after, again, by a conventional relational database, doesn't allow a gradual increase of those components and features. The application is one monolith. So the Moodle developers are faced with an "either-or" type of a decision: To make it as powerful as they can - of course still keeping the user interface as simple and clear as possible or to undo the whole work of two decades. The latter is senseless, not only the waste of investedtime and energy, there are plenty of other products in the market, commercial and free - free as free lunch or as in freedom, for the novice to choose from.

All that said, it is not always a simple yes-or-no. Firstly, even the Moodle core, that is what you get from download.moodle.org, is itself built in a modular architecture. So, certain components can be deactivated by simple clicks on front-end by the administrator. There are other components which can be removed with a little skill in programming. 'course, more can be reduced with more programming skills. And, counter-intuitively, one can make Moodle simpler by more programming as shown by the third-party theme developers. All these have been done and still available for the seeker. What you must understand is that it is not fair to expect the Moodle developers to offer their (free!) product in diffrent sizes.

I understand your approach and it makes perfect sense, to help "those that discover Moodle, that lack of time to design courses or that have simple needs" that is, specifically through templates. That has been recognized and already implemented by third party developers as you saw in the two examples came up in the discussion. If you stay longer, you're bound to see and aquire more. If you don't have the patience, as I believe from the Goodbye, I can only wish you success and happiness in your journey elsewhere.