Viral infections and software complexity

[John F. Haugh II]

This thread is working its way out of relevance in this newsgroup.  Whoever,
I feel the need to interject a few closing remarks, etc.

Professional discipline and ethics are not something which can be taught in
a single course.  Indeed, even programming skills themselves are difficult
to teach in a classroom environment.  There simply are too few hours in a
semester to learn that craft.

For a 132 hour undergraduate degree, which is just about what yours truly
has, the student will attend approximately 1848 hours [ 132 hours per week
times 14 weeks per semester ].  This is less than one years work in the
so-call ``Real World''.  One if you consider the number of non-degree
related course, the actual amount of degree-related experience drops even
lower.

In `The Mythical Man Month' the author discusses various problems which
are encountered when non-experienced programming staffs attempt to write
large software systems.  Several revisions later, the author points out,
the entire kitchen sink has been added and the product is impossible to
use or maintain.

There are those of us who feel that BSD Unix has arrived at the ``kitchen
sink'' state of its existence, and I for one also feel USG Unix is at the
same stage.  The system, by its very complexity, is becoming useless.

The maintenance of such a system becomes more and more difficult until
we arrive at the point where bugs aren't being fixed as fast as they are
being found or created.

And this is where we return to a question of discipline and ethics.  It
is only after years of experience that you realize the futility of adding
new features on top of old systems, without first repairing the underlying
system itself.
-- 
John F. Haugh II                        +----Make believe quote of the week----
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