On 03/11/15 15:57, Ian wrote: > It's interesting that you would point to the Hurd as an example of how a > software project should be run, perhaps if they had spent more time on code > and less on documentation, as Linux did, Linux wouldn't have utterly won > that battle. The GNU Hurd is a cautionary tale, not a model for software > development. > > As for your belief that documentation will solve everything (as it clearly > didn't for GNU Hurd), you may not be aware of the "Agile manifesto", which > has become the dominant project management methodology over the past 15 > years or so. On of the tenants of this is "Working software over > comprehensive documentation". >
You're applying a generalisation inappropriately here. Linux did not win because they spent time writing code instead of documentation. They did both. And even now they're taking ideas from Hurd and microkernel theory. The Agile manifesto is a load of crap. I've seen more teams and more projects destroy themselves by deferring to the Agile manifesto to excuse bad engineering, than destroy themselves by overengineering and overdocumentation. Also Bob was talking about the current Hurd project. It's a stretch to say that Hurd lost "because" of overdocumentation. There were technical problems with microkernel architecture that were not solved for a long time, less people in FOSS understood it, blah blah blah. Some microkernels like L4 are becoming more succesful today, and in the long run they have inherent advantages over monolithic kernels, such as being easier to formally verify. > You may also be unaware that in the ideal case, well-written code is > self-documenting, making external documentation unnecessary. This is one > of the tenants of the "clean code" methodology. This is for *other developers*, not for external reviewers or other projects that might to interoperate with different components of your product. It's irrelevant to what's being discussed. FWIW, I don't know if Hurd is a good example to follow for Freenet. I haven't reviewed their documentation yet. It's just this thread has very bad points in it from both sides. And the counterarguments are all missing the point. Take a step back to see the wider picture. X -- GPG: 4096R/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE git://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
