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After 9 Years, Bugzilla Moves Up to 3.0
BuggyUser writes "Bugzilla, the popular application to track and manage software development bug reports, has moved up to version 3.0. The 2.x series has been in service for the last nine years. From the article: 'According to the Bugzilla 3.0 release announcement, some of the new features in this version include custom fields, support for the Apache mod_perl module, per-product permissions, an XML-RPC interface, and the ability to create and edit bugs via email. A demo site has been set up where users can test the new version before downloading.'" Linux.com and Slashdot.org are both owned by OSTG.
Bugzilla's 9-year-road to 3.0 is a good example of why code should very rarely been rewritten from scratch and even if, then never the whole codebase. The more ambitious the goal one tries to achieve by that the harder the task - especially if one needs to keep updating the old codebase. There is no code which cannot be iteratively improved to achieve whatever the fresh code is suppose to.
Ahem. The normal userbase of a bug tracking program is not composed of coders and engineers?
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
I'm pretty sure they've grown up. Perl _is_ a great language for what it is. It _isn't_ for everything.
There's no reason to think that a rewrite of any large perl program wouldn't retain some perl bits or that most programs of this nature wouldn't benefit from some perl here and there. The point is that perl need not and should not be the core of a large project like this.
It's nothing against perl.
It's like building a stereo system: there's a few key components you want to go balls to the wall on (eg, speakers) but the bulk of the system doesn't have to be killer if you do that part right. In this case you balls out on perl for key parts and a more general implementation for the bulk.
Ahem. The normal userbase of a bug tracking program is not composed of coders and engineers?
Who is it discovers bugs and submits reports in the first place? Magic leprechauns?
Well for me, the more I used Perl, the less I liked it so I'm not surprised that Perl's popularity has faded..
When I was taught Perl, I thought 'cool a better, more powerful, portable shell' and then I had to maintain Perl's code, some written by beginners and some by 'experts'.. And I discovered what a mess Perl is..
Sure it's portable but the language don't give you the correct defaults so beginners code is usually awful AND experienced Perl coders let them sucked by TWTDI which makes their code hard to maintain by anybody else..
It takes *a lot* of self-discipline to write maintainable/readable Perl, so not surprisingly lots of Perl code is junk.
Hating Perl, I looked for another language and found Ruby which unfortunately I don't use that much as my boss won't let me do it (not widespread enough for him), *sigh* such a beautiful language and having to use shell or Perl instead..
It takes a lot of self-discipline -- a lot -- to write readable, well-structured English -- even more so than Perl, because it doesn't even have to pass a syntax check -- so not surprisingly, lots of English is junk. Perl purports to be accessible to beginners and experts, and to make easy things easy and difficult things possible, and as a result, it's more feasible to turn a poor design or no design at all into working code (which then serves as a working proof-of-concept for the next redesign).
Then again, maybe this isn't really that unexpected?
P.S. Perl::Critic attempts to alleviate these sorts of problems.
"We'd actually prefer if you STOP using Perl. You seem to be giving it a bad name. KTHX, Bye."