Manual, n.:
A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The
-information you need in in the others.
+information you need is in the others.
-- Ray Simard
%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
+%
+ THE LAST BUG
+
+"But you're out of your mind," It still wasn't perfect,
+They said with a shrug. As year followed year,
+"The customer's happy; And strangers would comment,
+What's one little bug?" "Is that guy still here?"
+
+But he was determined. He died at the console,
+The others went home. Of hunger and thirst.
+He spread out the program, Next day he was buried,
+Deserted, alone. Face down, nine-edge first.
+
+The cleaning men came, And the last bug in sight,
+The whole room was cluttered An ant passing by,
+With memory-dumps, punch cards. Saluted his tombstone,
+"I'm close," he muttered. And whispered, "Nice try."
+
+The mumbling got louder,
+Simple deduction,
+"I've got it, it's right,
+Just change one instruction."
+%
+Speaking of the philosophy involved in moving humanity into space:
+
+Furniture will be a largely obsolete concept. Take for example the dresser my
+mom bought for me when I was a kid. I still have it, and by the standards of
+its era, it's an admirable household fixture. It is a massive construction of
+maple wood, expertly joined with cunningly fit pieces, fitted and glued with
+the strength of iron. It is set with massive brass fixtures, and looks today
+-- discounting the dust -- as new as the day it was purchased, a quarter
+century ago. So far, so good; a fine piece of furniture, you might say. But
+let's look at it objectively, as a machine, as an object with a purpose. Here
+sit a hundred pounds of hardwood with a compressive strength of 1500 psi,
+jointed by an expert craftsman into a rigid box that would easily support a
+bull elephant. And what is the sole purpose of this massive crate, this
+monument to a dead tree? -- it holds my socks.
+
+Not only is it blind engineering overkill of epic proportions, it is also an
+environmental disaster. The home to generations of squirrels, a sentinel post
+for falcons, an autumnal banner of golden glory, a living creature, was chopped
+down to enshrine some underwear. This, my friends, is no way to run a planet.
+ -- Marshall T. Savage, from The Millennial Project:
+ Colonizing the Galaxy -- In Eight Easy Steps
+%
+Nearly every software professional has heard the term spaghetti code as a
+pejorative description for complicated, difficult to understand, and impossible
+to maintain, software. However, many people may not know the other two
+elements of the complete Pasta Theory of Software.
+
+Lasagna code is used to describe software that has a simple, understandable,
+and layered structure. Lasagna code, although structured, is unfortunately
+monolithic and not easy to modify. An attempt to change one layer conceptually
+simple, is often very difficult in actual practice.
+
+The ideal software structure is one having components that are small and
+loosely coupled; this ideal structure is called ravioli code. In ravioli
+code, each of the components, or objects, is a package containing some meat
+or other nourishment for the system; any component can be modified or replaced
+without significantly affecting other components.
+
+We need to go beyond the condemnation of spaghetti code to the active
+encouragement of ravioli code.
+ -- Raymond J. Rubey, in a letter to the editor of Crosstalk
+ magazine
+%
+63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
+ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
+now there's 63,005 bugs in the code!!
git.ckatri.com / bsdgames-darwin.git / blobdiff