On Thursday, 11 February 2016 at 09:51:16 UTC, Joakim wrote:
Consensus is for getting everybody doing the same thing, which
is not the road to technical quality. Linus has talked about
the "wasteful" OSS approach, which he compares to evolution:
http://bobweigel.net/projects/index.php?title=Weigel/Notes
Btw, in looking for a link with that old Linus quote, I also
found this other one, that I'd never read before and is relevant
for those who think D should specialize more:
Linus:
Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their
engineering practices or their coding style.
Tim:
I'd love to hear your thoughts on why.
Linus:
You heard them above. Sun is basically inbreeding. That tends to
be good
to bring out specific characteristics of a breed, and tends to be
good for
_specialization_. But it's horrible for actual survival, and
generates a
very one-sided system that does not adapt well to change.
Microsoft, for all the arguments against them, is better off
simply
because of the size of its population - they have a much wider
consumer
base, which in turn has caused them largely to avoid
specialization. As a
result, Microsoft has a much wider appeal - and suddenly most of
the
niches that Sun used to have are all gone, and its fighting for
its life
in many of its remaining ones.
Why do you think Linux ends up being the most widely deployed
Unix? It's
avoided niches, it's avoided inbreeding, and not being too
directed means
that it doesn't get the problems you see with unbalanced systems.
Face it, being one-sided is a BAD THING. Unix was dying because
it was
becoming much too one-sided.
http://yarchive.net/comp/evolution.html
