Re: Our Most Precious Resource: Programmer Time (was Re: long term goals)
On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 09:08:12PM +0100, Russell Coker wrote:
> 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.
>
See also Philip Greenspun's article "Managing Software Engineers" at
www.arsdigita.com/asj/sorry_I_don't_have_full_url. It was also
featured on /. maybe a month ago. That article addresses exactly
the same issues. I'm not sure the Free Software people are any more
tapped out or unmanagable than the paid software people.
cfm
> 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
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
--
Christopher F. Miller, Publisher cfm@maine.com
MaineStreet Communications, Inc 208 Portland Road, Gray, ME 04039
1.207.657.5078 http://www.maine.com/
Content management, electronic commerce, internet integration, Debian linux
Reply to: