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The less cynical part of me says that windows got so huge through the
usual process by which software gets huge: hiring.
It's really easy to believe you need more manpower on your software
project. That eventually leads to dividing your now-unmanageable
team into smaller teams with interface committees sitting in
between. As the process repeats itself the interfaces become
increasingly harder to change and the effort to re-use or encapsulate
similar pieces of work from across organizational barriers becomes
more than just re-building something expedient yourself. Which leads
to more hiring to help maintain the thing you built. Which leads to
more interfaces.
The number one job of a product/development manager should be to keep
the team size small enough that this doesn't happen. The number one
job of the architect is to find an architecture that can be
implemented by a team small enough that the interface documents stay
small. To bring this back onto topic, Plan 9's file server
abstraction is exactly this: a mechanism to ensure that interfaces
are consistent and that allows separation of development concerns
without the strangle-hold of interface committees.
Paul
On 8-Mar-07, at 10:34 AM, Wes Kussmaul wrote:
David Leimbach wrote:
So how did Windows get so huge? :-)
By
skillfully managing perceptions
building a worldwide network of "certified" people whose
livelihoods depend upon increasing complexity
ensuring the support of the hardware community by requiring regular
purchases of new computers
working behind the scenes to ensure that friends become decision
makers
FUD
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