Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 16:10:43 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: rkw@shark.dataplex.net, p.richards@elsevier.co.uk, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Am I wrong or is this just stupid?r Message-ID: <199608272310.QAA25610@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <1537.841179268@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Aug 27, 96 01:54:28 pm
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> You've consistently cited this as a problem and we've just as > consistently pushed back on it as a non-problem, asserting that the > main issue has nothing to do with fear of change and everything to do > with the LACK OF A WORKING PROTOTYPE TO EVALUATE. [ ... ] > Well, faith might be cool when it comes to religion, but not in > engineering. Nobody has ever disputed that the current make system is > full of holes you could drive a truck through, nor has there ever been > anything but 100% agreement that the whole tool interdependency issue > is badly handled and far from any conceivable ideal. However, it > works and nobody is going to switch horses until given another WORKING > alternative. Having the build system broken is simply an unacceptable > scenario since it stops just about everyone else from getting their > work done, not just those interested in conceptual elegance in a build > system. I have to say that what Robert wants is a top-down design process, where you agree on the problem, you agree on the general principles of the soloution, and you agree to ignore the implementation details below that scale. This is a typical process used in industry to communicate "what the market wants" from marketing to engineering, without engineering having to deal with delivering on marketings "promise of the week" subsequent to the agreement. It is very helpful to me, as an engineer, to get a firm "here is the black box" from marketing. It is also good if I can get an agreement for them to not second-guess my work in terms of their new "requirements", generated since they made the agreement. Richard really can't ask for this without offending people, since he is asking for a fiat, effectively: he wants it acknowdleged that if he takes it on, it's his bailiwick, to do with as he pleases. Probably, he would be better off contacting the core team directly for that kind of assignation. But he's not wrong to want the assurances in the first place. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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