Re: Mail reader
"Michael J. Forster" <mike@sharedlogic.ca> writes:
> On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 02:42:55PM -0600, Gary Hennigan wrote:
[snip]
> > You might want to learn a bit about the art of debate or at least read
> > more carefully. I didn't say *I* used an "all in one tool" because of
> > the possibility of failure at multiple points. It was simply an
> > argument in favor of doing so, and a valid one at that, despite your
> > use of term "FUD".
>
> You should learn to write more carefully. Your argument implicitly
> assumes at most one failure point per utility. Nonsense.
Actually, you yourself are implicitly assuming that an "all in one"
application has to be N times larger than N smaller applications that
could replace it. Nonsense.
> In theory, 5000 lines of code separated into small highly-cohesive modules
> (i.e. utilities) communicating through well-defined interfaces (i.e. the
> shell environment) should not present a greater probability for failure
> at multiple points than 5000 LOC in a single large executable. Indeed,
> skillful modularization and interfacing should reduce the number of
> failure points as well as isolate their impact on the overall
> application. This is basic CS theory.
Theory and practive don't often coincide, particularly when it comes
to software. Besides, who says you can't design a modular "all in one"
application, with well defined interfaces between it's modules?
> In practice, we have only to compare all-in-one tools like sendmail and
> bind to many-small tools like qmail and djbdns. And don't bother to
> debate me on those examples: I manage all four of them on over 500
> boxes -- I know which ones yield fewer failure points.
I might just "bother" anyway.
First, sendmail is an OLD code. True, it's gone through rewrites, but
I wouldn't be surprised if it has some legacy code in it. Also, I've
read a few CS "theory" papers documenting how software degrades with
age. Given that, how does the age of sendmail compare to the age of
qmail and djbdns? Not only were the latter developed more recently,
using more modern SE principles, they were also written with the
specific goals of being tight, small and secure, if I'm not
mistaken. That's not really the case with sendmail.
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, just that you're not using
valid examples, and if you think software design works just like CS
theory says it does you got some learnin' to do! ;)
In reality, once again, I'll say both approaches have their merits. I
typically use small utilities when I can, although wrangling the
configuration files for all those utilities has grown tiresome for me
as the years progress.
Anyway, I can see this thread degrading into a holy war (is there a CS
"theory" on that?) so I hereby concede any future argument.
Gary
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