"To use the example he gave of the nasty function that was supposed to do something simple but had a whole bunch of seemingly useless extra crap in it, the point was that all those extra little things that you'd throw away in a rewrite were necessary bug fixes. You throw them away, and unless you wrote those bugfixes in the first place (not likely, and even if you did, not likely you would remember), you lose all that information. That means that your new, "cleaner" version is very likely going to have similar bugs. Perhaps even the same bugs you fixed in your older, crufty code."
I agree that rewriting literally from scratch is a pretty stupid activity most of the time, but doing a proper rewrite actually results in a better product. The thing is that doing so takes time. A lot of time. Is not the most cost effective path, but it is healthy and necesary.
It's important to know when to do a rewrite of the code, because doing it at a wrong time can be disastrous for business as seen in some companies.
Irrelevant red herring, and a bad example to boot. You're equating a potentially dangerous situation (in your example, less solder means a less solid joint, which means the oil could leak) with a harmless situation (reusing your old code, crufty as it is). In one case you're making a conscious decision to be less safe, while in the other you're making a conscious decision to leverage the work that's already been done.
What's harmless and what is not is a gray area. I don't think shitty IIS code (and boy it must have plenty!), for example, is harmless.
Releasing a product with crufty code leads to bugs, greater effort to maintain, and may even put you out of business. One example of that are game developer houses. Sure, the "release now, fix later" policy may work some of the time, but it is wrong.
heh, ironically, medium to high level quake playing requires to contorl the resources of the map, and have precise timing, in order to win, not just shoot around.
However, if you play online at any given game, chances are that people would be just running around shooting whatever moves.
I am not an RTS guy myself, but I wonder if high level players do use strategy. Perhaps the guy who asked was playing with the wrong people?
The whole concept of "registering" or "reserving" words found in common language is silly.
Somebody registers "water" an suddenly the world has to pay him? Argh...
If Adobe would have made a word up for their product, (AdobeIllustrator?) then perhaps it would have been more reasonable to come charging at other companies.
Consider also the webmaster's perspective. Many people who browse the web don't know jack about chosing a web browser. Hell they don't even know or want to know what a browser is. They just want to surf the web. And those people will have the feature turned on, and will see links in your site, that you did not put in there.
I think that even Joe Sixpack wont like the idea of spending regularily money on software. People who spend a couple hundred dollars on a piece of software don't want to hear it stops working after a year, so they have to pay more money.
There are people out there who use old software. I know lots of people, (especially Joe S. types) who are still using Office 95 or 97 for example. Just because it's old doesn't make it a piece of junk. Hell you can even use WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS to write perfectly good-looking documents!
I'm not saying suscriptionware is bad. The inminent lack of choice is.
Slashdot Mirror
very true
it's elitist to think that just because some people have an easier lifestyle, they must be also much smarter.
What are the major improvements that justify this not being RH 8.x?
I was seeing mysterious reboots on my linux server at work, until I discovered it was due to NT admins grabbing the wrong keyboard.
I found amusing that when loading this item, there was a huge Visual Studio.NET ad
Mozilla will probably be 2.0 RC96
woo hoo!
junk for decades!
I have been wanting to do that for years now!
I've been seeing that phrase come up since MS-DOS 3.3 (which is the first MS product I used).
To this day, "It does that sometimes" and "it just works, don't ask why" are phrases used commonly by
* Me troubleshooting MS products.
* MS people I've worked with.
* many other people, knowledgeable or not.
it should be made a law of computing or something.
"To use the example he gave of the nasty function that was supposed to do something simple but had a whole bunch of seemingly useless extra crap in it, the point was that all those extra little things that you'd throw away in a rewrite were necessary bug fixes. You throw them away, and unless you wrote those bugfixes in the first place (not likely, and even if you did, not likely you would remember), you lose all that information. That means that your new, "cleaner" version is very likely going to have similar bugs. Perhaps even the same bugs you fixed in your older, crufty code."
I agree that rewriting literally from scratch is a pretty stupid activity most of the time, but doing a proper rewrite actually results in a better product. The thing is that doing so takes time. A lot of time. Is not the most cost effective path, but it is healthy and necesary.
It's important to know when to do a rewrite of the code, because doing it at a wrong time can be disastrous for business as seen in some companies.
Irrelevant red herring, and a bad example to boot. You're equating a potentially dangerous situation (in your example, less solder means a less solid joint, which means the oil could leak) with a harmless situation (reusing your old code, crufty as it is). In one case you're making a conscious decision to be less safe, while in the other you're making a conscious decision to leverage the work that's already been done.
What's harmless and what is not is a gray area. I don't think shitty IIS code (and boy it must have plenty!), for example, is harmless.
Releasing a product with crufty code leads to bugs, greater effort to maintain, and may even put you out of business. One example of that are game developer houses. Sure, the "release now, fix later" policy may work some of the time, but it is wrong.
indeed...
they do not seem to be installing these things on old hardware anymore.
I tried last night to install mandrake 8.1 on a P166MMX with 48 MB RAM, and the installer (!!) ran out of memory.
And it was a text install... To install only server stuff... no X no nothing.
I could install my old SuSE 6.4 though.
he was being sarcastic...
Still, that's preferred to "punishing" MS for monopoly by granting them the ability to introduce their software in the market even more.
Let's not demonize RH just for the sake of it.
heh, ironically, medium to high level quake playing requires to contorl the resources of the map, and have precise timing, in order to win, not just shoot around.
However, if you play online at any given game, chances are that people would be just running around shooting whatever moves.
I am not an RTS guy myself, but I wonder if high level players do use strategy. Perhaps the guy who asked was playing with the wrong people?
it's 2 admins at 75K each
Heh, I got one like that here. It's like they're charging him by the word or something.
Perhaps he thinks Spanish is jut bloatware.
Lately I managed to get him to communicate more when I do the laconic routine myself on purpose.
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Skilled people with the abacus(sp?) can outperform calculators.
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Last I checked "illustrator" was a pretty common word. Same league as "water" or "Word" (hello MS ;), IMHO.
About KIllustrator, you are right; they most probably were trying to capitalize on the fame of the brand Adobe made of a common word.
My point was that all in all, is silly to make brands out of common words.
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The whole concept of "registering" or "reserving" words found in common language is silly.
Somebody registers "water" an suddenly the world has to pay him? Argh...
If Adobe would have made a word up for their product, (AdobeIllustrator?) then perhaps it would have been more reasonable to come charging at other companies.
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Consider also the webmaster's perspective. Many people who browse the web don't know jack about chosing a web browser. Hell they don't even know or want to know what a browser is. They just want to surf the web. And those people will have the feature turned on, and will see links in your site, that you did not put in there.
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There will always ways to cheat. But why make it easy?
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if one thing abounds in *nix is text editors, most of them way better than Notepad.
Vim for example does syntax coloring, and is included in many distributions.
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he said the same thing after 6 and here we are
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Who are you trying to fool :)
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They said 'Students' not 'Stupids' :)
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I think that even Joe Sixpack wont like the idea of spending regularily money on software. People who spend a couple hundred dollars on a piece of software don't want to hear it stops working after a year, so they have to pay more money.
There are people out there who use old software. I know lots of people, (especially Joe S. types) who are still using Office 95 or 97 for example. Just because it's old doesn't make it a piece of junk. Hell you can even use WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS to write perfectly good-looking documents!
I'm not saying suscriptionware is bad. The inminent lack of choice is.
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