Considering the ambition of the project relative to its resources, I think it's reasonable for STEPS to keep a low profile and spend less effort on "educating" than one might like.
That said, I'd appreciate a simple "suggested reading" list for independent study - in my case, for someone with an undergrad in CS. *That* said, this section <http://vpri.org/html/writings.php> is wonderful. Cheers, Andrey On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Reuben Thomas <r...@sc3d.org> wrote: > On Sunday, February 28, 2010, Brian Gilman <brian.gil...@gmail.com> wrote: > > That having been said, I think the project is an interesting one, but I'm > > not sure it's really ready for tons of publicity yet. > > Think of a software project as like Plato's model of the soul as a > charioteer with two horses, one immortal and one mortal, only without > the goal of reaching heaven. The mortal horse is the imperatives of > the real world: developers, money, users, releases and so on, while > the immortal horse represents elegance, simplicity, performance, > design perfection. A successful project usually manages to keep the > two horses in relative harmony, making something good and practical. > VPRI seems to have started off with just the immortal horse (or, if > you take the view that the project's members are gods, two immortal > horses). > > In other words, I think you have it the wrong way round: it is > precisely by caring about one's public that one fixes the rough edges > so that the code is releasable and usable even when it's not finished > (and it never is). This is the whole point of "release early, release > often": stay in touch with the real world. > > I think it's scandalous that a publically-funded non-secret project > does not have far stricter requirements for public engagement than are > apparent here. > > I would add that the reason I care is because I have a great deal of > respect for Ian Piumarta in particular: I was blown away by his > Virtual Virtual Machine work when I went to INRIA Rocquencourt in > 1999, greatly impressed by his code generation work on Smalltalk (at > least that did get out the door), and really excited when I first came > across COLA. This stuff should be out there! > > -- > http://rrt.sc3d.org > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >
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