Slashback: Crusher, Satellites, Silence

Slashback with more on Wesley Crusher; overclocking new Athlons the kindler, gentler way; building silent PCs for the more ambitious; software that stinks; and more -- just read on for the details.

That fetid odor continues to rise. cconnell writes "In September, Slashdot and Developer.com were kind enough to publish an article I wrote titled Most Software Stinks!. The article generated 748 comments on slashdot, making it one of the most active stories in recent months. Here is a follow up piece I wrote which responds to some of the comments."

Silence, fool! The Panther! writes "Here's an article I wrote that shows step by step how to achieve some measure of silence in my home office. It's different from most in that it approaches damping existing hardware rather than buying new. Some ideas were suggestions of Slashdot readers from a previous article. Lots of photos for the reading-impaired." Hemos may have been going for a rather normal-looking but quiet PC, but The Panther sure isn't.

Step 39: With your dremel strapped to the hamster, gently nudge the billiard ball ... Now that the famous pencil trick isn't an option for would-be AMD overclockers, more complicated means have been found to unlock and reclock. Carlos writes: "I saw that you have a scoopage on the unlocking of the Athlon XP by Tom's Hardware and there is a better and more reversible way by VR-Zone."

200 years is a long time even for a Congressman. Michael H. writes "Woohoo! Congress has given a $30 million shot in the arm to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission, previously feared canceled. CNN story here. There's still no guarantee that it won't be canceled later, but at least Congress is listening to the fact that it would take ~200 years for the next window if we missed this one."

Hey, that guy's too old to be a kernel maintainer -- we'll make him an actor. bahamat wrote yesterday: "I'm hanging out in Wil Wheaton's chat room (#rfb on undernet) and he's just announced that he's going to be making a cameo as Wesley Crusher in the new Star Trek X." Apparently, the news hit quite a few readers, too -- and for those who haven't, check out our interview with Wil. Maybe he'll get to be on The Tick, too.

Comments

Re:Wil Wheaton is a bit of a sexist oaf.

[elvum]

Allow me to point you to Wil's previous comment on the interview.

Summary: he was joking.

Re:Commented code

[Rick the Red]

No kidding. I once heard some guru pontificate that your source should have three lines of comments for each line of code. I thought that was stupid, until I found myself maintaining other people's code. Then I saw some example code from a database vendor that had three comments for each line of code (mind you, they were explaining how to use a particular feature) and it was as clear as day. It was like someone took the blindfold off. I've tried to totally comment all my code since then, and I've found that I actually write better code. Now, when I have a bug, I look for what the comment says I intended the code to do, then I double-check that the code actually does that; usually the bugs find (and fix) themselves this way. Try it, you'll like it!

software stinking

[egomaniac]

Mr. Connell makes the excellent point that some engineering problems -- anything from difficult bridge designs to going to the moon -- are every bit as complicated as the software we produce.

I agree.

However, it's important to consider one thing -- how many bridges are built every year? How many have as many challenges as the Clark Bridge? Not many, certainly. How much software is written in a year?

If I had, say, three years and millions of dollars to design every piece of software I write, with lots of subordinates double-checking everything I do, well then my code would be perfect as well. The fact is, however, that we write an awful lot more software every year than we build engineering feats, and that has a lot to do with the quality issue. If every program were written over a period of years by a dedicated team of engineers backed by serious budgets, there wouldn't be nearly as much crappy software. However, there's a lot more software hacked together by one guy working out of his garage -- and I daresay if we built bridges that way, a lot of them would fall down.

"So," says the critic, "we just need to design software as seriously as we design bridges."

Not really, I respond. For one thing, our need for software is *really high* right now. We need tons of it -- web browsers, and word processors, and operating systems, and filesystems, and ... well, everything. None of the early stuff is quite good enough yet. Don't fool yourself into thinking Linux is the end of the road in operating systems, for example. Software is immature. We're forging ahead on every front at once, before the basic pieces are in place, and this will necessarily strain the industry. Once the infrastructure settles down, once we don't need as many projects going on, natural consolidation will lead to more people on each team and better quality.

When civil engineering was immature, a lot of bridges fell down, too, before everything was worked out. I doubt too many people stood around saying "You idiots! Every wagon we design works! Why not bridges?!?" At that time, building bridges was so difficult that it was amazing it ever worked. If it fell down, you just built it stronger and hoped for the best. We've come a long way since then.

I think we're at a similar point in software engineering. Sure, some of our stuff really sucks, but it's such a new field that it's really amazing that we get anything done at all. I frankly think it's unreasonable to expect the field to have matured overnight.

Maybe I'm just not as picky as some people, maybe the cynicism of old age is setting in. But I really don't feel that there's any need for a "Grab the torches and pitchforks! We improve software quality *now*!" movement. Things are getting better, and they will continue to as the market matures. Maybe we should just let it.

Re:A stupid question, I'm sure, but. . .

[Indy1]

you use a fine pencil, like a .5mm mechanical, to short the L1 bridges on top of the processor. This allows you to change the multiplies on the cpu in the bios of your motherboard if it supports it (my kt7a-raid does). The newer athlon XP's have some changes that make this impossible to do with a simple pencil.