Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio@proxima.alt.za]

> On the other hand: doesn't individual development suffers from at least two problems?
>
> (1) lack of a common vision leading to potentially widely divergent and incompatible solutions

Yes, but the products are small enough that one can bring two
incompatible strands together.  Whereas dealing with a _single_
version of GCC is a nightmare that no one wants to tackle.  So we
swallow its insanities and call them features.  More to the point, we
let ourselves become dependent on it because we imagine that there are
no alternatives.  And in fact, there aren't any, if we measure them by
the very bloat that we have become dependent on.

> (2) lack of sufficient energy (manpower etc.) behind any given project development to make any real headway.
>
We sent man on the Moon without GCC or autoconf.  It concerns me that
the number of features we seem unable to do without is growing
according to Moore's law.

> Presumably there's a happy medium between supreme bloat and minimalism?

Maybe, but there isn't a mathematical formula defining this vague grey
area.  So when making a decision, you have to pick one of two mutually
exclusive guiding principles.

++L