Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 18:10:58 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams) Cc: terry@lambert.org, nate@mt.sri.com, proff@suburbia.net, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Internal clock Message-ID: <199704020110.SAA12652@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199704020030.RAA10694@rocky.mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Apr 1, 97 05:30:46 pm
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> Since I don't believe even you think a person can have intimate > fore-knowledge of what someone intends to do with a piece of software, I > took it that you wanted to a formula to follow so you could be as rich > as Bill, since the former is so out of touch w/reality that you couldn't > possibly be thinking it. You plan to allow as close to "any reasonable use" as you can, and when it falls down againsts someone's "reasonable use", you correct it. It's not a matter of knowing how someone will use it, it's a matter of not closing off possible uses through poor design considerations. There is a world of difference between the two... one is "I didn't think of your use" and the other is "I didn't think of any use other than my own". > > > > Software does not mutate. > > Bits on a piece of plastic aren't software, any more than molecules of > metal makes something a 'car'. They may have things in common, but > don't lump them together. I like to think of it like Newton's laws, applied to software: 1) Programs once operational will remain operational unless acted upon by a programmer or bad data. 2) The speed at which a program may become non-operational is directly proportional to the amount of programmer activity and/or bad data, and inversely propotional to the size of the original program. 3) Every time you change a library routine or interface, you break the programs that depend on the previous behaviour. In this case, the first and third laws. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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