From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Mar 12 13:45:56 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from picnic.mat.net (picnic.mat.net [206.246.122.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 994AF37BBF8 for ; Sun, 12 Mar 2000 13:45:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from chuckr@picnic.mat.net) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by picnic.mat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA56550; Sun, 12 Mar 2000 16:42:49 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from chuckr@picnic.mat.net) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 16:42:49 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Robey To: Nate Williams Cc: Dennis , Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai , Joe Abley , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD dead? Well, not in theory... In-Reply-To: <200003122133.OAA09182@nomad.yogotech.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 12 Mar 2000, Nate Williams wrote: > > >That's also why I am wasting my time slowly documenting the FreeBSD > > >internals in my spare time. > > > > "slowly" is the key word here. Real products are documented before they are > > in commercial use. > > Really? That's very different from my experience as a commercial > software developer. > > And, it's not the experience I had from using your products as well. > Documentation was as sparse as the FreeBSD documentation, but this is > typical of most projects, except for government projects which requires > truckloads of documentation. > > That's the main reason that government projects are rarely on time and > budget, and never end up with the features that are desired. They spend > all their time documenting, and no time implementing. :) You ever see those docs they write? Generally, it's an odd case of nothing actually being better than something. I did once see a company that did the docs first, and then used those docs as the design template. Any changes in the design had to be modified in the docs first, and the docs were under a version control system. That was the one and only time I ever saw that. Dennis is living on another planet than we do. And don't call the stuff that comes with consumer products docs, because they are usually written by marketing, and usually largely a work of fiction. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include C & Java programming, FreeBSD, chuckr@picnic.mat.net | electronics, communications, and signal processing. New Year's Resolution: I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up fictitious words in the dictionary. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message