Re: OT: Why is C so popular?
On Sat, Aug 30, 2003 at 02:26:23AM +1000, Russell Shaw wrote:
> Ron Johnson wrote:
> >On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 19:18, Colin Watson wrote:
> >>Amen, brother. I spend a fair bit of my time in Debian trying to stop
> >>people from rewriting things and getting them to fix existing code
> >>instead. It's an uphill struggle: for some people rewriting from scratch
> >>seems to be much sexier.
>
> It can (and often is) be easier to rewrite if the original author isn't
> around to explain the workings, and the language/application-framework
> doesn't have decent debugging outputs.
Since I joined Debian, I've worked on and sometimes become the primary
maintainer of several pieces of software that fit these criteria. Every
time, I've found it much better to change things incrementally. While
I'm releasing code that fixes bugs and makes life easier for real users,
the people working on complete rewrites are slogging away with very
little to show for it, and more often than not give up before anything
gets released at all.
> >>I've seen maybe one or two occurrences where rewriting from scratch was
> >>actually worth it. Before that's the case, the existing code has to be a
> >>complete nightmare and you have to have a deadline to add some new
> >>feature or other to it. It does happen, but it is (and should be) rare.
> >
> >Unfortunately, if the fundamental design is Really Flawed, then
> >incremental changes are impossible. Yet I also agree that rewriting
> >swaps old bug for new. There's a Catch-22 sometimes.
>
> It has the advantage that you are the current author, are intimately
> familiar with the new code, and can easily fix any bugs.
If you have a problem with maintaining other people's code, then you
shouldn't take on the responsibility of maintaining other people's code,
IMO.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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