18 Feb
2020
18 Feb
'20
7:05 a.m.
On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 16:17:18 -0800 Jon Steinhart <jon(a)fourwinds.com> wrote:
Richard Salz writes:
The relevant TUHS part of it that maybe some folks here can speak to is how
did UNIX remain so cohesive for so long? How were decisions made? Of course,
this started to fall apart with System III and such as things got more clunky.
Agree. I don't mind additional documentation but a man page is
strongly preferred.
'The problem is that the ecosystem has been
fragmented by people doing
their "documentation" in their preferred
formats instead of in a common
(man) format.
Damn those unauthorized developers. How dare they write code that doesn't
meet standards.
Get off my lawn. Noel Chiappa writes:
There is just so much more code now and the S/N ratio is
definitely worse but there is more good stuff as well.
My problems with using the source as documentation:
a) there is usually no or insufficient documentation about
even what it is implementing let alone *how* it should be
used,
b) you don't know if some behavior is an accident of the way
the code behaves or actually part of some required (but
unwritten) specification.
c) even if there some function header comments often there is no
top level comment tying together eveyrthing.
d) harder to see missing functionality.
e) impossible to grok large programs.
I am _sooo_ tempted to say 'What do you
think source is for?' :-)
I think that this is part of the problem, have you looked at the source for
any modern package? It's pretty impenetrable. I see a lot of overly complex,
poorly written code with no documentation. That makes it really difficult for
someone to extend or otherwise modify it. It's probably easier to create a
new universe than understand an existing one.