... it's about protecting us from mean 'ol asteroids and nasty space aliens (or even nasty aliens who would use asteroids to destroy the earth!) Geez guys, don't you read the conspiracy theories posted here!?
Of course they're going to tell everyone else it's for national defense, but we all know better, right?
... I might think Microsoft leaked it on purpose, so the OSS community would find the bugs, point them out publically, and even describe how to fix the problems.
Heh... I knew I'd seen an article like the posted one before, and Joel's article was it.
What both articles ignore is that it's quite possible that the original design just wasn't appropriate for evolving task of the software. Yeah, it happens. That doesn't mean you don't understand the design, in most cases you understand it quite well, and it's just not a good design. So, you come up with a more appropriate design and you rewrite the code based on it.
What always bugged me about Joel's assertion that you had no reason to believe you'd do a better job the 2nd time around. If you understand the original design and intent of the code, and now better understand the how others want to use your code (call it an updated and validated specification if you like), you can make an informed decision about whether or not it makes sense to scrap it or patch it. Anecdotes about failed software rewrites are fine and all, but as an friend of mine (Hi Linda!) likes point out: the plural of anecdote is not data.
That's how I did it... no caffeine after 4pm one week, 3pm the next... by the time I got to 11am, the headaches I got when I stopped drinking it had gone away.
Got it for the kids... they enjoy it a lot. Best of all, they don't know they're actually exercising when they're playing it!
And it's fun... can't beat that.
Developers don't need to have their sound coming out of X
Based on your logic, developers do not deserve anything but TTY and vi.
Not sure where you got that, my point was that there are already adequate API's for sound (the part you clipped: "... there are already rich sound APIs available to them") But I guess you want them all in X... to each his own.
>Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server. Nice.:)
Just nice? It's excelent! This is the biggest X Windowing achievement since first actual implementation of X Windows.
I'm sorry, but I worked with X10r1 (though we didn't let most folks use X until X10r2), and there have been a lot of things that would deserve that crown well before MAS. I wish I had my old X10 docs so I could give you an idea of just how much the system has changed.
The thing is, while people might process information better with audio and visual components, software has be slow to respond to this, and as has been pointed out, there are already audio services that complement X. Developers don't need to have their sound coming out of X, there are already rich sound APIs available to them.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice, but IMO not terribly earth-shattering.
As I remember, there was a company named Alice who had a desktop product called Looking Glass. The also had an API called Galaxy iirc... I wonder if Sun's already had the lawyers OK the name Looking Glass... ?
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... it's about protecting us from mean 'ol asteroids and nasty space aliens (or even nasty aliens who would use asteroids to destroy the earth!) Geez guys, don't you read the conspiracy theories posted here!?
Of course they're going to tell everyone else it's for national defense, but we all know better, right?
J... I might think Microsoft leaked it on purpose, so the OSS community would find the bugs, point them out publically, and even describe how to fix the problems.
Of course, I'm not the suspicious type ... :-)
JHeh ... I knew I'd seen an article like the posted one before, and Joel's article was it.
What both articles ignore is that it's quite possible that the original design just wasn't appropriate for evolving task of the software. Yeah, it happens. That doesn't mean you don't understand the design, in most cases you understand it quite well, and it's just not a good design. So, you come up with a more appropriate design and you rewrite the code based on it.
What always bugged me about Joel's assertion that you had no reason to believe you'd do a better job the 2nd time around. If you understand the original design and intent of the code, and now better understand the how others want to use your code (call it an updated and validated specification if you like), you can make an informed decision about whether or not it makes sense to scrap it or patch it. Anecdotes about failed software rewrites are fine and all, but as an friend of mine (Hi Linda!) likes point out: the plural of anecdote is not data.
That's how I did it ... no caffeine after 4pm one week, 3pm the next ... by the time I got to 11am, the headaches I got when I stopped drinking it had gone away.
Got it for the kids ... they enjoy it a lot. Best of all, they don't know they're actually exercising when they're playing it!
And it's fun ... can't beat that.
Developers don't need to have their sound coming out of X
Based on your logic, developers do not deserve anything but TTY and vi.
Not sure where you got that, my point was that there are already adequate API's for sound (the part you clipped: "... there are already rich sound APIs available to them") But I guess you want them all in X ... to each his own.
>Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server. Nice. :)
Just nice? It's excelent! This is the biggest X Windowing achievement since first actual implementation of X Windows.
I'm sorry, but I worked with X10r1 (though we didn't let most folks use X until X10r2), and there have been a lot of things that would deserve that crown well before MAS. I wish I had my old X10 docs so I could give you an idea of just how much the system has changed.
The thing is, while people might process information better with audio and visual components, software has be slow to respond to this, and as has been pointed out, there are already audio services that complement X. Developers don't need to have their sound coming out of X, there are already rich sound APIs available to them.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice, but IMO not terribly earth-shattering.
As I remember, there was a company named Alice who had a desktop product called Looking Glass. The also had an API called Galaxy iirc ... I wonder if Sun's already had the lawyers OK the name Looking Glass ... ?