On 5 October 2014 02:59, Jakob Kroeker <kroe...@uni-math.gwdg.de> wrote:
> There should be also resources for maintenance in addition of grants for > the 'new fancy stuff'. > Probably all of you would agree that at a certain point building on top of > broken software > is just stupid and leads to nowhere. But this happens in real life > (probably less in Sage in comparison to other CAS, but who knows) > and therefore for me it seems that this insight is not yet in the heads of > all research sponsors and researchers. > Building on top of broken stuff happens all the time in real life. Commercial software companies will never choose to spend one or more release cycles doing maintenance and fixing fundamental design problems (which often are identifiable only after the software has been used and developed for some time - it's effectively impossible to get something "right" the first time). They mostly ignore the "technical debt" (eh) and go for features. Given enough time, the software becomes an unmaintainable mess and eventually someone decides that it's time to do a full rewrite. Supposedly, one of the advantages of open source software is that, due to the lack of commercial pressure, developers can afford to spend time doing the right thing, and tackle the hard, boring and soul-crushing job of fixing past mistakes and porting over existing functionality. I think that free software is the only type of software that has the *potential* of achieving a certain type of long-term quality. I think the Linux kernel is one of the best examples of this (I remember reading a few years ago that the USB stack had seen something like six or seven full rewrites). In reality though most of the time this does not happen. There are typically few developers familiar with the inner intricacies of a non-trivial project, and in general people just prefer to code the sexy and the new. And as you say, it does not help that this is the type of job for which it is surprisingly so hard to get financial support - even in programs like GSoC. No flashy goals, no awe-inspiring proposals, just boring, fundamental wood chopping. > > > > Jakob > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
