On 25/10/14 17:38, Martin Read wrote:
I would take the "several alternatives" as tending to indicate that
perhaps sysvinit + sysvrc does not work "perfectly well", but instead
merely BALGE (By And Large Good Enough).
I really doubt that it indicates anything like that. There are more
reasons why people start working on alternatives than just the
perceived inadequacy of existing solutions. The world is full of
programmers, you know, and every minute or so a new young programmer
feels the urge to demonstrate to the world how great he is and starts
reinventing the wheel.
If you look at the history of software development you will find that
the same pattern repeats itself over and over again. In the beginning,
there is a need for something that doesn't exist yet. Then someone
starts programming it. His solution will at first be buggy and lacking
features. Then it will get better, and at some point it will do its
job very well and to the entire satisfaction of the users. That's the
point when programmers should stop working on that thing except for
bug fixes and such. But that never happens. Instead they will start
looking for more and more features to add, because the project has
become an important part of their lives and their favourite passtime.
And new programmers will appear and start changing things or restart
from scratch, because they know better. And in the end you will always
have one or more bloated and unstable monsters and disappointed users.
I guess everyone here can name examples of that.