Indeed, Voltaire had it right. Better is the enemy... (of my enemy is my friend??)
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:10 PM, erik quanstrom <quans...@quanstro.net>wrote: > > > I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you > better be > > > around to answer my questions. > > > > You have something here: these are central software-development tenets > > of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source > > community work. Essentially, "done" is an elusive illusion, so enlist > > others throughout the process. > > i'm just going to take a guess that you have never had egg > on your face caused by publishing code before it's time? > > i can't stand my own silly mistakes, unfinished and crap code. > why should i look at anyone elses? by the way, can you > name operating systems that develop in this way? i > was under the impression that even, e.g., linux code is submitted > in fairly complete fashion and tends to get rejected even > on style grounds. > > i think the idea that is illusary is that there is no difference > between code that doesn't work and code that does work > but might be improved. > > part of the craft of programming is to know when something > is actually finished. the mistake is to "improve" things that > work well enough. i think one could write quite an interesting > book critiquing modern software development for failing to > stop at good enough. but one would need to be quite a bit > smarter, more educated and less lazy than i. i'll satisfy myself > by quoting some such people. (oddly #1 and #3 are missing > from fortune) > > Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. > - rob pike, Notes on Programming in C > Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. > - niklaus wirth > When in doubt, use brute force. > - ken thompson > > - erik > >
