Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
They have been maintained, which is why MS
> Word (for example) is so buggy it can barely be used for some
> operations, such as multiple-chapter books with include files and
> endnotes for each chapter.
Horse pucky.
It could *NEVER* be used for those things -- they're not features which
got broken, they're features which never worked to start with.
Actually, it used to work -- sort of. It got worse.
Anyway, we are arguing semantics here. Evidently, what Brooks and I
call a total rewrite you refer to as refactoring or something along
those lines. (Defined as "restructuring an existing body of code,
altering its internal structure without changing its external
behavior.") We meant the process Apple computer does fairly often,
according to the trade magazines and Cringley. A bit more than
refactoring but perhaps not a full rewrite. It makes their software
not backward compatible to an extent that Windows users would find
unacceptable.
Their latest version is code named "Snow Leopard" which is snazzier
than most Windows code names. Snow Leopard only works with the Intel
processors, not the Power PC. That is a bigger leap than Windows ever made!
- Jed
