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Rewrites Considered Harmful?
ngunton writes "When is "good enough" enough? I wrote this article to take a philosophical look at the tendency for software developers to rewrite new versions of popular tools and standards from scratch rather than work on the existing codebase. This introduces new bugs and abandons all the small fixes and tweaks that made the original version work so well. It also often introduces incompatibilities that break a sometimes huge existing userbase. Examples include IPv4 vs IPv6, Apache, Perl, Embperl, Netscape/Mozilla, HTML and Windows. "
I think it may have something to do with programmer ego and something to do with the challenge. I'm guilty of it myself. You find something you're interested in and you want to build it. It doesn't matter if someone else has done it or even done it well before you. The challenge is to do it yourself.
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
Windows XP/Server 2003 were NOT complete rewrites of the OS. Many of the individual components within the OS may have received extensive retooling, but the OS as a whole was not a complete rewrite. New features were added. Existing features were modified. The code simply evolved from one version to another, just as with most products.
And the fact that somebody thought it was should give you a good clue that Microsoft's marketing machine is quite a powerhouse indeed - they want the average consumer to THINK that XP was some totally new thing. It wasn't. In fact, if you install all the latest DirectX runtimes, patches and so forth into Win 2k, you will basically conclude that the difference between a fully patched up-to-date Win 2k and Win XP is themeability and some graphics geegaws. And that product activation stuff if you are running a non-corporate version of XP.
Joel on software has covered this point in a good article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog00000000 69.html.
Things You Should Never Do, Part I
Very true... One of the few "rewrites" that Microsoft has rever done is the NT codebase (which was actually more of OS/2 morphing into NT), and that wasn't a true rewrite since the "original" DOS/Win31 codebase keps livingo on with Win96/98/ME.
MS has tried some rewrites (I think they tried in Excel rewrite, I think Code Complete references that) but scraped them (also never giving up on the previous generation codebase).
That's one thing they do well (for better or worse) is not waste any money on rewrites (look at Win9x)
Rushfan
The point is that all the items you mentioned were changed, but most were not rewritten from scratch, which is what this thread is all about.
Compared to rewriting NT/XP into Longhorn will be, no. but compared to something like DOS 2 to DOS 3 (or was DOS 2 the rewrite?), it was a HUGE undertaking at the time. Creating a 32bit kernel from a 16bit one was pretty big news at the time.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
The user's are locked down now, their programs work, and every thing is centrally administered thanks to group policy and active directory. Overall it's been very nice.
.reg file for this and other settings to speed the process, since this used to be a very small business that has grown very fast and we never bothered to set up a network-wide group policy system.
Locking the users down, group policy, and active directory are as much a part of XP as 2K.
The new UI just sucks IMNSHO
I agree.
Start --> Run --> gpedit.msc --> User Config --> Admin. Templates --> Control Panel --> Display --> Desktop Themes --> Force Windows Classic
I have a
Our servers are 2K so I can't comment on 2003. I'm trying to sell the execs on using kernel 2.6 and samba 3.x for our next server. I figure something approaching 2.6.10 ought to be out by the time we are ready, so it should be stable enough.
The unofficial
How is it possible to so completely miss the point of Perl 6? The intent is not necessarily to replace Perl 5 - Perl 5 is fantastic and the Perl 6 developers above all people know this. Perl 6 is perhaps best thought of as a DIFFERENT LANGUAGE which will 'just happen' to be, in many places, very similar/identical to Perl 6.
Once you start thinking of Perl 6 in that manner, you realise what it's for. It's not to replace all of the Perl already out there. It's to provide a new tool, a new language for doing new things in, drawing on the experience gained in years of working with Perl 5 and other languages.
Ponie, of course, is part of the effort to make sure that at least some of the vast amounts of Perl 5 code is usable with Perl 6, should programmers wish it. And even that's not a total rewrite of the existing Perl codebase.
So ultimately, that article has nothing of use in it. Yes, programmers should be careful what they rewrite and when they rewrite it, but many times such things are actually worth it. GTK+ 2, anybody?
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...