On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 15:44:03 GMT, Roel Schroeven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I was thinking more of end-user packages: if you somehow could lay your >hands on the source code of Visual Studio itself, you're still not >allowed to do anything with it. And why would anybody want to waste their time reading the source code of Visual Studio? ;-) <duck> No, honestly, after all most of the time what programmers learn is just API. The very point of having libraries after all is not having to learn the low-level mechs of this thing, but just using them in a push-button manner! My boss read the C-tree code. I was programming reports and other "peripheral" stuff, so I never had to do it. I was just using a subset of the C-tree functionality, and even that was a very small subset actually. Now I'm sure that B-trees used in there are a wonder of engineering - however, I simply have other goals and not enough time to learn them to appreciate that. Personally, I think that for most people the _direct_ benefits of access to source code are greatly exagerrated. I would place much, much more emphasis on indirect, derived benefits of availability of source code. Yes, you CAN read the source code. But the point is, you DON'T WANT TO. Because economically speaking, division of labor applies, and idealistically speaking, it's better to stand on the shoulders of giants. -- It's a man's life in a Python Programming Association. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
