🚀 go-pugleaf

Russ Nelson writes
> In article <489@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn  
Reid) writes:
> 
>    Imagine two carpenters building a door.  One builds the frame, the other
>    builds the door.  Neither one is on-site, and neither has met the other.
>    They are both working from the "spec", or the blueprint.  How likely
>    do you think it is that the door fits in the frame, that the latch lands
>    squarely in the hole in the door frame, and that the hinges are set
>    properly?  I wouldn't give it 1 chance in 100,000, even with experienced
>    carpenters.
> 
> I'm afraid that you're revealing your ignorance here, Glenn (don't
> worry, I've done it *lots* of times myself).  Not only *can* it be
> done, it *has* been done.

Sure it's been done.  But on the whole, it doesn't work that
way very often.  Also, it's actually much easier to get
timber framing right than it is to hang a door correctly.
I was, of course, exaggerating beyond trying to make a point
in suggesting the odds to be so distant as 100,000 to 1,
but the underlying point, that I think is still good, was
that it's difficult for two companies to write software
against a spec and then expect it to work the first time.

Someone else (I think Tom) made a much more valid point
than suggesting my ignorance (ignorance of what, by the
way?).  That point was that the software industry is often
*compelled* to do simultaneous work from a specification,
and doesn't usually have the luxury of interconnected testing. 

Sun actually does a great job of this by putting on the NFS
Connectathon every year, in which hundreds of vendors
come and set up their equipment in a huge conference room
and they build a network and test everything against
everything else, and keep a matrix of what kinds of things
worked correctly.  It's intended to help vendors work the
kinks out of their NFS software, and from what I've heard,
it works 
great.

--
 Glenn Reid				RightBrain Software
 glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us		NeXT/PostScript developers
 ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn		415-326-2974 (NeXTfax 326-2977)