Deploying to many machines is hard
on
Trustworthy Computing
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· Score: 5, Informative
I'm the author of the hotfix and one could expect me to say 'yes, please go ahead and install it on your corporate network with thousands of machines'.
But I won't say that.
First of all deploying any software on a large network is a serious task. It should be carefully planned and performed with the correct (read: responsible) approach.
The hotfix must be tested on as many machines as possible. Possible negative consequences must be determined and decided upon if they are acceptable or not.
While there are many controversial points in the article, I liked the following paragraph a lot:
If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself into doing it. You have to work on small things that could grow into big things, or work on successively larger things, or split the moral load with collaborators. It's not a sign of weakness to depend on such tricks. The very best work has been done this way.
I can only confirm that these methods really work since I used them during the development of IDA Pro. You start with something small and grow it. It takes time, patience, energy, but the result is more than simple sum of small parts - the whole is bigger than its elements.
Now I'm working on decompilation (more generally binary program analysis) and hope that the same methods will work...
Alas, the expressive power of programming languages is limited.
You can not document everything required to understand the code in the code itself. Sure, it must be easy to read and comprehend but the self documenting stops there. There always be some aspect you can not put into the code.
My favorite comments is
// FIXME:...
Seriously, comments must be added if the time spent writing them is less than the time which will be gained trying to understand the code.
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I'm the author of the hotfix and one could expect me to say 'yes, please go ahead and install it on your corporate network with thousands of machines'.
But I won't say that.
First of all deploying any software on a large network is a serious task. It should be carefully planned and performed with the correct (read: responsible) approach.
The hotfix must be tested on as many machines as possible. Possible negative consequences must be determined and decided upon if they are acceptable or not.
In short, more rigorous testing is required.
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Ilfak Guilfanov, the author of the hotfix
After some hours looking at WMF file format I developed a fix for it:
http://www.hexblog.com/
My fix works for Windows XP systems. I have tested it on my machines.
Now I'm working on decompilation (more generally binary program analysis) and hope that the same methods will work...
Use Firefox or Opera. Keep IE only for the sites which explicitly requite it. This is not the last bug.
You can not document everything required to understand the code in the code itself. Sure, it must be easy to read and comprehend but the self documenting stops there. There always be some aspect you can not put into the code.
My favorite comments is
Seriously, comments must be added if the time spent writing them is less than the time which will be gained trying to understand the code.