begin quoting boblq as of Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 12:06:14AM -0800: > On Thursday 24 March 2005 12:01 am, Stewart Stremler wrote: > > Shims, or thinking ahead in the design? > > Surely you joke. Or are you omniscent? Not at all. Omniscence isn't required.
The IFF standard was a wonderful example of "thinking ahead". Pascal strings -- first byte indicates length -- was not. "If we ever need longer strings, we can just change the compiler!" Not everthing has to be foreseen to take some things into account. And a little thought can often go a long way towards avoiding considerable grief. > boblq "just an ignoramus, no fan of 'forward' design" So you don't like the idea of the PATH environment variable? -Stewart "You can often devise an API before coding the implementation" Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
