From owner-freebsd-current Wed Jun 19 11:49:24 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA08690 for current-outgoing; Wed, 19 Jun 1996 11:49:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA08684; Wed, 19 Jun 1996 11:49:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id LAA13578; Wed, 19 Jun 1996 11:47:05 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199606191847.LAA13578@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: tcl -- what's going on here. To: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 11:47:05 -0700 (MST) Cc: phk@FreeBSD.org, current@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <9606191454.AA18527@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu> from "Garrett Wollman" at Jun 19, 96 10:54:15 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > As someone who maintains the only parts of our `external' tree that > were ever correctly imported in the first place, I can tell you from > first-hand experience that it works damn well, thank you very much, if > the importers can be bothered to do it right. I am not willing to > declare defeat, and I don't want unreadable binary garbage in the > SOURCE tree. I have to agree with Garrett with regards to the use of corrected vendor branches. The benefit is well worth the cost, in the long run. One of my favorite arguments about expenditure of effort is the compiler writer vs. the compiler user. I believe that if compiler users outnumber compiler writers 1000 to 1, then anything that will save 1 hour of user time is worth 1000 hours of effort by the compiler writer. A more recent (though exagerated) example was presented in the PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds", in which it was purported that Steve Jobs had a conversation with a programmer similar to: SJ: I know it boots fast, but can you make it boot faster? P: I don't think so... SJ: Think about it! If you save *5* seconds on the boot, and there are a million of these in offices across the country, then you are saving 30 *lives* a day! Take the long view. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.