Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
heap. It's a classic example of "second system syndrome" as defined by
"the mythical Man month".
Errh, what?
rtfb it was published in 1972, is still in print and the first five chapters
are as relevant today as they were when it was first published. It explains why
software projects fail. I think it's pretty sad when failings in an industry
recognized 35 years ago are still happening today.
Brooks says write one system to throw away because you are going to anyway. The
first time you implement, you don't understand the problem and you frequently
leave out functionality or implement things in a clumsy or incorrect way. This
next implementation you, in theory, understand the problem and can do a better
job which leads us to...
second system syndrome. when you implement a system for the second time you
think you have the problem fully understood, add lots of features and
capabilities and end up with a disaster on your hands because you over estimated
your capabilities.
which is really Fred Brooks's way of saying write two system to throw away
because you're going to anyway.
a great example of this is Microsoft. They rarely get anything right until the
third version (implementation). Other examples are easily found if you just look.
It's overly complicated, poorly documented, and
has a terrible user interface that only a geek would even consider using.
What's wrong with the excelent user guide on the project's site? Which of the
three UIs exactly do you think is horrible?
could never get the containers nesting right. If the instructions on how to use
an LVM can't be explained on a postcard, you don't understand how to communicate
with your users or the implementation is really off. I spent lots of time on
the mailing list talking to developers about various problems and a consistent
problem was communicating the terminology to users. Simple things like how do
you set up your physical disk was not documented well enough to be useful.
the GUI tools did not lead you to a correct solution. It was just a bunch of
menu items that you could choose a random. Hell, tinyca does a better job at
guiding you in creating a small certificates hierarchy which is a task of
similar complexity.
--
Speech-recognition in use. It makes mistakes, I correct some.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
