🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Nov22.174222.8614@ida.liu.se> felkl@aste16.Berkeley.EDU (Feliks Kluzniak) writes:

   In article <2540@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, Jim Crammond says:
	...
   |> The parallel parlog system isn't a commercial piece of software
	...

   ...  Personally, I find the distinction between commercial software
   and research software (i.e.  software that just does not have to
   work, as long as it works sometimes!) rather strange. As a
   practising programmer, I am shocked by the apparently widespread
   acceptance of this distinction.



given the above statement, i find it hard to imagine that mister
kuzniak has _ever_ worked on a commercial grade software product.  it
may be that he has been involved in some garage scale products, but
even this seems unlikely.

anyone who has actually had to deliver a working product to several
thousand customers would know that there is a world of difference
between writing a program that satisfies your own needs and then
making it available to others and producing a program that can be sold
on any reasonable scale.

writing the code in the first place is only a minor part of the
problem.  installation instructions, user documentation, internal
documentation for maintenance by others, and even setting up systems
for producing shippable copies are all an enormous time burden.  after
the sale, the support issue raises its head with problems which
utterly the original problem of getting some code to do something
interesting. 

in a research environment, it _is_ satisfactory to solve part of the
problem, and it may be that this solution will be interesting or
useful to others.  in a product, it is _not_ usually satisfactory to
create a product which does not live up to reasonable expectations of
completeness and documentation on the part of the user.

if mister kluzniak would like to learn the difference between the two
worlds, i suggest he get a job in support for a large computer
company.  this is where the difference between research and product is
most apparent.


--
I don't think the stories are "apocryphal".  I did it :-)  .. jthomas@nmsu.edu