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Date:      Fri, 18 Oct 2002 16:10:11 -0700
From:      Kent Stewart <kstewart@owt.com>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
Cc:        Will Andrews <will@csociety.org>, Scott Long <scott_long@btc.adaptec.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG, ports@FreeBSD.ORG, dirk@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: cdrtools doesn't build on -current
Message-ID:  <3DB094D3.7020801@owt.com>
References:  <20021018073701.GA71980@hollin.btc.adaptec.com> <20021018210201.GJ19874@procyon.firepipe.net> <3DB07B3B.3090907@owt.com> <3DB07DBA.57DBA165@mindspring.com>

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Terry Lambert wrote:
> Kent Stewart wrote:
> 
>>In 40 years of using computers, nothing has changed. The system's
>>people are still primadona's and do nothing wrong.
>>
>>Get used to it :). Unfortunately!! People don't install OSes because
>>of the OS as much as the codes they can run on it. The importance tree
>>is inverted. The people that think they are the most important are
>>only there to provide improved tools to the people that users depend on.
> 
> 
> Standards compliance changes, in theory, are for the benefit
> to "the people that users depend upon".
> 
> All other systems changes are pretty much gratuitous, unless
> they are to support hardware and/org add features.  When Mike
> Smith first implemented ACPI, he got enough shit to push him
> out of the project; but it's damn cool that, on systems where
> it works, I can hit the power button, and the machine will
> gracefully shut itself down.
> 
> If it's unfair to make certain changes (it is), then it's also
> unfair to bitch about certain changes (it is).
> 
> Moving towards standards compliance will break all the places
> there are workarounds to standards non-compliance.  You could
> therefore equally argue that these should be seperated out in
> the patches in ports, to ensure that "sudden compliance with
> standards" never broke anything.
> 
> Yeah, there has been some primadona behaviour with architectural
> changes whose only compatability was whether or not the change
> was enabled with a kernel option.  But the glove fits both parties,
> too.

I think that is absolutely true. When I worked in a programming group 
for Siemens, I made a comment that I had never met a humble, good 
programmer. My department manager laughed so hard, that he snorted and 
had tears in his eyes.

I sort of think about the two sides like Patton did about Montgomery 
in WWII. The way I see it, if the systems people didn't think the way 
they do, we would not see the progress we see. I have always been 
involved with diagnosing problems on the user side. So I got to see 
the primadona behaviour on both sides. The systems people never made 
mistakes and the application programmers never did either. It was only 
the people that worked between them that got to see the truth :).

Kent

-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html


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