2.8.1: a necessary corrective.

[Richmond Mathewson]

Joel wrote a long, and fairly sesquedepelian,
disquisition on Bugs that were not fixed in 2.8.1.

On my lap just now I have:

"Modern Systems Analysis And Designs" by Hoffer,
George and Valacich - Prentice Hall, 2002 - ISBN
0-13-042363-7

This (extremely boring and tedious) book goes to great
lengths to explain that:

1. "perfection" is an illusion.

2. aim for 60% and then be happy when you get 80%.

3. Systems Development is a long, tedious and
iterative business.

(fairly good summary of whole book in three bullet
points).

This makes me think of F. Waismann (friend of Ludwig
Wittgenstein) who never wrote a book - when he died
somebody found a set of shoeboxes under his bed full
of record cards - from which they were able to
assemble 2 brilliant, mind-blowing books.

Now, we could wait for 25-40 years while RunRev
produce the App to blow away all other apps . . . but
I will be a doddering old f**t of 85 by then [there
is, of course, the theory that I am already a
doddering old f**t :) ].

Some of us would rather support a very good
'work-in-progress' than wait for the great day.

So Joel's long 'thing' about bugs is, to my mind,
rather naive and silly. 

I have been using Runtime Revolution for about 5-6
years - and have just had a look at RR 1.1.1 (lurking
on a hard drive somewhere) and realised just how far
the 'beast' has come. Hey, why not dig out Hypercard
and play with that?

RunRev should be 'nudged' continually about the bugs;
then in the next iteration a few more bugs will have
been ironed out - AND, inevitably, more bugs will crop
up as the feature set in expanded. I have had a lot of
fun "bashing the betas".

Played with a demo version of another RAD the other
day: it didn't have an "bugs" - the whole bl**dy thing
was a giant cockroach, and I spent 6 hours rescuing my
system after it had strutted its extremely funky
stuff.

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson

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A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
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