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Date:      Wed, 19 Jun 1996 11:47:05 -0700 (MST)
From:      Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
To:        wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman)
Cc:        phk@FreeBSD.org, current@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: tcl -- what's going on here.
Message-ID:  <199606191847.LAA13578@phaeton.artisoft.com>
In-Reply-To: <9606191454.AA18527@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu> from "Garrett Wollman" at Jun 19, 96 10:54:15 am

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> As someone who maintains the only parts of our `external' tree that
> were ever correctly imported in the first place, I can tell you from
> first-hand experience that it works damn well, thank you very much, if
> the importers can be bothered to do it right.  I am not willing to
> declare defeat, and I don't want unreadable binary garbage in the
> SOURCE tree.

I have to agree with Garrett with regards to the use of corrected
vendor branches.  The benefit is well worth the cost, in the long
run.

One of my favorite arguments about expenditure of effort is the
compiler writer vs. the compiler user.  I believe that if compiler
users outnumber compiler writers 1000 to 1, then anything that will
save 1 hour of user time is worth 1000 hours of effort by the
compiler writer.

A more recent (though exagerated) example was presented in the PBS
series "Triumph of the Nerds", in which it was purported that
Steve Jobs had a conversation with a programmer similar to:

SJ:	I know it boots fast, but can you make it boot faster?
P:	I don't think so...
SJ:	Think about it!  If you save *5* seconds on the boot,
	and there are a million of these in offices across the
	country, then you are saving 30 *lives* a day!

Take the long view.


					Regards,
					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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