From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: From: erik quanstrom Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 00:10:07 -0400 To: 9fans@9fans.net In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS Topicbox-Message-UUID: 18561dfa-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > > 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