What I wonder is if they try to work on the features they claim to want so desperately (number one priority!) for years. But there probably isn't a lot of overlap between people who need gimp to be like professional alternatives and people who can decently code. In our IT study we had four major tracks and the people doing media design were notoriously bad at coding anything beyond HTML, and even that was considered difficult by most of them (the three other tracks were software, embedded software, and business -- the latter also infamous for the same reason).
That's true, but my comment was more about the HN crowd which is primarily (or exclusively) from programming background.
Professionals will always go with a well-marketed and popular option and they don't care about paying 500-1000$ for an image editing program. They don't care (or know) about open source. But I expect better from HN crowd.
As for GIMP and its features, well, when Photoshop firdt mentioned about the new Content Aware feature, there was a collective orgasm, but GIMP had that feature (by sheer virtue of the scriptability and flexibility which is inherent in its design) in a script format at least a year or two before that.
I don't expect GIMP to win hearts of professionals and their shiny macbooks, but for a casual heavy job, GIMP is more than capable, and expect programmers to appreciate it for what the GIMP project has achieved. But all we get here is "but but Photoshop!"
If they had something similar that was a different workflow but was as powerful, flexible, and involved a few steps to do what you can do in PS in three or four steps but in the current GIMP in fifteen or more, then that'd be great. It's not that PS's workflow is inherently better, it's that I can do things in seconds that take at least a few minutes, far more work, and a lot more effort in GIMP.
I wonder if these same people also bitch about learning new languages or frameworks when technology moves on.