Re: Re: SAP-DB

* Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> [010429 10:44] wrote:
> > > I swore I'd never post to the hackers list again, but this is an amazing
> > > statement by Bruce.
> > > 
> > > Boy, the robustness of the software is determined by the number of characters
> > > in the directory name?
> > > 
> > > By the languages used?
> > 
> > [Snip]
> > 
> > My guess is that Bruce was implying that the code was obfuscated. It is a
> > common trick for closed source to be "open" but not really.
> > 
> > I don't think it was any sort of technology snobbery. Far be it for me to
> > suggest an explanation to the words of others, that is just how I read it.
> 
> I don't think they intentionally confused the code.
> 
> The real problem I see in that it was very hard for me to find anything
> in the code.  I would be interested to see if others can find stuff.

I think this is general problem in a lot of projects, you open up
foo.c and say... "what the heck is this..." after a few hours of
studying the source you finally figure out is something that does
miniscule part X of massive part Y and by then you're too engrossed
to write a little banner for the file or dir explaining what it's
for and incorrectly assume that even if you did, it wouldn't help
that user unless he went through the same painful steps that you
did.

Been there, done that.. er, actually, still there, mostly still
doing that.  :)

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [alfred@freebsd.org]
http://www.egr.unlv.edu/~slumos/on-netbsd.html