Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 30 Oct 2004 16:28:54 -0700 | From | Tim Hockin <> | Subject | Re: code bloat [was Re: Semaphore assembly-code bug] |
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On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 02:13:37AM +0300, Denis Vlasenko wrote: > > Bloat is cause by feature creep at every layer, not just the app. > > I actually tried to convince maintainers of one package > that their code is needlessly complex. I did send patches > to remedy that a bit while fixing real bugs. Rejected. > Bugs were planned to be fixed by adding more code. > I've lost all hope on that case.
See, there is an ego problem, too. If you rewrite my code, it means you're better than I am. Rejected.
Features win over efficiency. Seriously, look at glibc. Hav eyou ever tried to fix a bug in it? Holy CRAP is that horrible code. Each chunk of code itself is OK (though it abuses macrso so thoroughly I hesitate to call it C code). But it tried to support every architecture x every OS. You know what? I don't CARE if the glibc code compiles on HPUX or not. HPUX has it's own libc.
> I guess this is a reason why bloat problem tend to be solved > by rewrite from scratch. I could name quite a few cases:
From-scratch is a huge risk. But yeah, sometimes it has to be.
> It's sort of frightening that someone will need to > rewrite Xlib or, say, OpenOffice :(
Never gonna happen. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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