> Sorry, but "everyone does it" just doesn't hack it. also, "everyone does it" is an excuse that no one over the age 7 should use. imitating blindly -- a.k.a monkey-see-monkey-do (apologies to monkeys) -- seems to happen when we are unaware, undisciplined, lazy or panicked. it is how stampedes happen. it's ok if you're in a herd, can't see much and trying to avoid a predator; not so for designing software.
a good example can be found in an episode of a UW TV program called "behind the code", produced by MS and UW, where one of the original developers of NT (hardware and drivers) recalls a kernel crash that was caused by bad MS sample code that ended up in several driver by different vendors.
