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- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
- Path: sparky!uunet!newsgate.watson.ibm.com!yktnews!admin!news
- From: wader@watson.ibm.com
- Subject: Re: Portable?
- Sender: news@watson.ibm.com (NNTP News Poster)
- Message-ID: <1992Jul30.233933.28094@watson.ibm.com>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 23:39:33 GMT
- Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
- Nntp-Posting-Host: wades.watson.ibm.com
- Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
- Lines: 48
-
- In <1992Jul29.214801.13081@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:
- > >Parts of OS/2 probably do fall into this category. Just as an example,
- > >tell programmer A to write a new file system from scratch in C with the
- > >following specifications (insert those for HPFS). Tell programmer B to
- > >translate the assembly code for HPFS (assuming it was written in assembly
- > >to begin with and has already been debugged) to C. Which of the two will
- > >likely have fewer bugs? Depends on the talents of the programmer, but I
- > >wouldn't be surprised if programmer B introduced fewer bugs. Other parts
- > >probably also fall into this category, but I don't know just how modularized
- > >OS/2 is, though it's hard to imagine an operating system as complex as this
- > >being monolithic rather than modularized.
- >
- > Programmer A is doing Top Down design, while programmer B is doing
- > bottom up design. Programmer A can take into account the archetectural
- > quirks of a number of different systems. Programmer B is going from an
- > archetectural spec for a limited number of systems. In B's case, translating
- > to C may not be that difficult. Translating to C for another processor
- > or system may be. It's the hacks introduced in doing that that can cause
- > problems. In addition, in 'B's case, you have two programmers working on
- > the project. One who wrote the assembly, and 'B'. The assembly coder may
- > not have had the same objectives as B, and B may have to hack around
- > some stupid performance things. Given that A and B are equal programmers,
- > I'd suspect that B would have a far worse time of it.
- >
- > >> Taking up someone elses code can be a pain in the *** sometimes, especially
- > >> if their coding style is different from your own.
- > >
- > >Agreed.
- >
- > Let's kill this thread (i.e. This'll probably be my last post on
- > this thread unless something interesting comes up).
- >
- I agree on killing this thread - this seems to have become an
- issue better suited to <pick any appropriate> software process-related
- newsgroup. Possible lumping of design scope and implementation decisions
- may be a hidden assumption here, which could make this discussion
- as futile as it has become frustrating.
-
- Just an opinion ( can't help it . . . using "design" always
- gets me going ;).
-
- > petesk@microsoft.com
- > My Opinions.
- >
-
- Wade R. Boaz
- TJ Watson Research Center, Hawthorne
- wader@yktvmh.vnet.ibm.com
-