On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Sasha Pachev wrote:
Do I think Sasha's communistic plans would be better than America's copyrightistic? I really don't know--but it doesn't matter much because I don't like either of them very much, and I don't think either are very effective
I object to the term "communistic". Think about it - are public roads "communistic"? What about universities and research labs?
I'm sorry you object to the word--it's become quite vilified in Western society. Perhaps "socialistic" won't bother you quite as much?
At any rate, by "communistic" I simply mean the dictionary definition of "state-owned means of production" or "economic goods distributed equitably by the state". So yes, I see certain actions of the US government as being communist or socialist to a point. There's a reason we call it "Social Security", and not because it's a capitalistic idea.
What I am saying that good code is more likely to come out of something that is run more like a research lab than a commercial entity. So the production any code that has a wide base of application, eg. OS, web/database/authentication/file server, desktop environment, office suite definitely belongs there.
I think what you're saying is quite insightful; I have no problems with the theory. Socialism is great in theory--the problem is pulling it off in practice.
In this case, how do you get the most talented coders to work in your ivory tower research lab? Probably the only way is to pay them lots of money or give them lots of perks--otherwise they'll go elsewhere. Now, where do *you* get all this money from? Hopefully from the high-quality software they put out. But now, if we give our coders *some* sort of soft deadlines, we'll probably make even *more* money and be able to hire even *more* talented coders, right? Great trade-off, right? So how about we start pushing them a little harder, right? Sure, the code may not be quite as great, but we're making more money, and that's what's important to the shareholders, so ...
Google is a perfect example of this, in my mind. How long will they be able to hold on to this "ivory tower research lab" idea where people are able to spend a third of their time with no deadlines and no requirements on what they're programming?
To, to summarize, I'm not arguing against the idea that if you have top-quality, self-motivated programmers coding for the love of programming that you'll inevitably get better code. I'm just pointing out that it'll be very difficult, if even possible, to pull off.
~ Ross
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This sentence would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.
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