"Kevin D. Clark" wrote:
{...snip...}
> So anyways, a few years ago I can remember distinctly that one of the
> chief implementors of Perl (you'd recognize the name if I mentioned it
> here) argued that Perl's signal handling code was "good enough" and
> that even though it had problems, it was "good enough" for his
> purposes and that he'd be willing to live with the occasional failure.
> Luckily, the Perl community ignored this bit of sophistry and worked
> to fix the problems.
>
> There is no silver bullet. And there are times when a program is
> "good enough". But sometimes, in the Perl community, I think that
> some people say "good enough" a little bit too quickly. And I like to
> resist that notion a little bit.
>
> If I mention the word "nazi" can this thread die? (-:
>
you just hit one of my hot buttons, so no, it can't die. :-)
There's a point hidden there that is commonly missed, to the effect that there
are, and should be, different standards depending on the consumers of your code.
If you are coding solely for your own consumption, it is sufficient to decided
it's good enough for your needs, but if you are coding for consumption by others
then the definition of good enough really depends on their needs. Put another
way, what's good enough for Bill's BASIC interpretor isn't good enough (or
shouldn't be accepted as good enough) for the world of Windoze applications
developers and users.
Seriously, the issue described above about Perl seems similar to issues I've seen
with Windows and even with applications developed in-house for local use by other
applications. There is a distinction between "platform" code and application
code, but most folks don't get it. Obviously enough of the Perl community did.
If the open source community is to prevail I believe it is essential that we all
get it (those of us who like to play at the platform level at least!).
--Brucem
**********************************************************
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following text in the
*body* (*not* the subject line) of the letter:
unsubscribe gnhlug
**********************************************************
