Genotypes and Phenotypes (Gunnar Peterson)

[secureCoding2dave at davearonson.com (SC-L Reader Dave Aronson)]

Andreas Saurwein Franci Gon?alves <saurwein at gmail.com> wrote
(rearranged into  correct order):

> 2009/10/13 Bobby Miller <b.g.miller at gmail.com>
> > The obvious difference is "parts".  In manufacturing, things are assembled
> > from well-known, well-specified, tested parts.  Hmmm....

> Thats the idea of libraries. Well known, well specified, well tested parts.
> Well, whatever.

Ideally, yes.  However, programmers love to reinvent the wheel.  It's
MUCH easier, both to do and to get away with, in software than in
hardware... and often necessary.

Need a bolt of at least a given length and strength, less than a given
diameter?  There are standard thread sizes, and people make bolts of
most common threadings and lengths, for purchase at reasonable prices,
at places easily found, and you can be fairly certain that any given
one of them will do the job quite well.

Need a function for your program?  If it's as common as a bolt, it's
probably already built into the very language.  If it's nearly as
common, maybe there's a fairly standard library for it... and if
you're very lucky, it's not too buggy or brittle.  Otherwise, it's
probably going to be much cheaper (which is all your management
probably cares about) to just code the damn thing yourself, than to
research who makes such a thing, which ones there are, who says which
one is how reliable, which ones have licensing terms your company
finds palatable, and justifying your choice to management.  Lord help
you if it requires money, because then you have to justify it to a
higher degree, get the beancounters involved, budgetary authority from
possibly multiple layers of manglement, and spend the rest of your
days filling out purchase orders.

If you do wind up coding it yourself, is the company then going to
make that piece of functionality available to the world separately,
whether for profit or open source?  N times out of N+1, for very large
values of N, no way!

Will they at least make it available *internally*, so that *they*
don't have to reinvent the wheel *next* time?  Again, N times out of
N+1, for almost as large values of N, no.

-Dave

-- 
Dave Aronson, software engineer or trainer for hire.
Looking for job (or contract) in Washington DC area.
See http://davearonson.com/ for resume & other info.