Re: Our Most Precious Resource: Programmer Time (was Re: long term goals)
On 2000-12-04 10:57, Chip Salzenberg wrote:
>According to Jason Gunthorpe:
>> On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Chip Salzenberg wrote:
>> > There are a lot of good programmers. But that resource -- *us* -- is
>> > close to exhaustion. The Free Software and/or Open Source movements
>> > are being spread very, very thin by user demands and our own
>>
>> Aye.. I think the `barrier to entry` is also rising, all the cheezy little
>> apps seem to have been done to death and then some. It is rarer and rarer
>> that you can sit down and write something worthwhile and be done in a
>> month.
>
>Good point. Sounds like something ESR probably covered in his
>"Homesteading the Noosphere" essay.
I think that ESR is correct about Homesteading the Noosphere. However I
disagree with your assertion that the small things have been done.
I would like to devote a large chunk of my time to something serious and
significant like writing a decent enterprise management tool (something which
is like Unicenter but doesn't suck). However I have not been able to do this
because there are so many small things that keep distracting me:
Writing good file system benchmarks.
Writing mail server benchmarks.
Fixing all the little bugs in all the software I use that get in my way
(heaps of work).
Working with various patches etc for Postfix to run serious mail servers (I'm
designing a system for 1M users with every feature imaginable).
None of the above things are that difficult, but they all require weeks of
work. Add it up and add the other small tasks that are on my list but which
I've forgotten to itemise and it prevents me from working on more serious
things. If people volunteer to take on some of the above work then I'll have
spare time to kill Unicenter!
--
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/projects.html Projects I am working on
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page
Reply to: