Re: comment about gnome architecture

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 19:32, Greg Breland wrote:
> I would also like to assert that the earlier a spec is written the
> better.  Writing a spec after someone notices that 4 programs are doing
> xyz in their own way is too late.  Of course, this almost guarantees
> that the spec won't be very good in its first draft form.  The
> alternative is that there will always be some percentage of apps that
> can't be bothered to change something that already works.

Writing a spec before you know the problem almost certainly guarantees a
bad spec, and the only way to really know the problem is by working a
lot with it. Normally by implementing software handling it. Writing
specs when you're in fantasy fairyland about the problem will end up
with bad specs not solving the real problems. They might not even be
implementable.

While it would be "nice" if there were good specs availible for every
issue before you start writing any software, I don't think that is a
realistic idea. If you look at the ultimate specifications, standards,
they are always done after a lot of people already have implemented the
thing to be standardized, so that the problem and solutions are well
understood.  

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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
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