Indeed, Voltaire had it right.  Better is the enemy...  (of my enemy is my
friend??)

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:10 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>wrote:

> > > I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you
> better be
> > > around to answer my questions.
> >
> > You have something here: these are central software-development tenets
> > of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source
> > community work.  Essentially, "done" is an elusive illusion, so enlist
> > others throughout the process.
>
> i'm just going to take a guess that you have never had egg
> on your face caused by publishing code before it's time?
>
> i can't stand my own silly mistakes, unfinished and crap code.
> why should i look at anyone elses?  by the way, can you
> name operating systems that develop in this way?  i
> was under the impression that even, e.g., linux code is submitted
> in fairly complete fashion and tends to get rejected even
> on style grounds.
>
> i think the idea that is illusary is that there is no difference
> between code that doesn't work and code that does work
> but might be improved.
>
> part of the craft of programming is to know when something
> is actually finished.  the mistake is to "improve" things that
> work well enough.  i think one could write quite an interesting
> book critiquing modern software development for failing to
> stop at good enough.  but one would need to be quite a bit
> smarter, more educated and less lazy than i.  i'll satisfy myself
> by quoting some such people.  (oddly #1 and #3 are missing
> from fortune)
>
> Rule 3.  Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small.
>        - rob pike, Notes on Programming in C
> Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
>        - niklaus wirth
> When in doubt, use brute force.
>        - ken thompson
>
> - erik
>
>