Dustin Puryear wrote: >http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_4/levesque/index.html > >An interesting read. > >
Thanks Dustin - that's a good concise description of the not only the Open Source problems but of software design problems in general. I don't believe that the issues that the author describes are unique to "Open Source" software but are in fact more a symptom of undisciplined software writing in general. These problems are just as apparent in much of the software available for Windows as they are in Open Source software. There's a superb book that ought to be compulsory reading for everyone involved in the production of software - the book is called "The Mythical Man-Month" by Frederick Brooks (still available according to Amazon). The book has got to be 20 years old but the lessons the Brooks describes are as valid today as they were when the book was first written .... this, in itself is significant, we're still repeating the same errors (so neatly documenting in the article above) that we were making 20 years ago... I've always wondered what they actually teach in college - there's a huge gulf between being able to write a good program and being a good programmer - to paraphrase Feynman ... In theory there's no difference between good code and a good program, in practice there is. If you've ever wondered why programs and coding projects never seem to work right then read Brooks book. Edmund Cramp
