The (superlow)quality of software (was Re: Python Popularity: Questions and Comments)

[Oleg Broytmann]

On Tue, Jan 01, 2002 at 09:56:41PM -0500, David Bolen wrote:
> >    That was exactly my point - TCP/IP was not mature.... but other
> > alternatives was even worse.
> 
> I'd disagree that having an exposure or missing a feature would make a
> protocol "immature".  TCP/IP as a protocol family has been stable and
> unchanging for a long time now, and I would argue meets its original
> goals.  There are many very solid implementations, including support
> for specific implementation optimizations that are well known and
> commonly implemented.  I think thats more than enough to consider a
> protocol stack could be considered "mature".
> 
> Whether or not the protocol was designed to withstand the current
> state of the art for attacks, or whether it has all the modern
> desirable features is an orthogonal question - one of applicability
> and not of maturity.

   I agree to change my wording: "applicability" instead of "maturity".

   My original point was that: UNIX and TCP/IP (and all that) are here not
because of quality, but... I don't know why, really. Look, what is better:
UNIX or (insert your OS here)? Pascal or C? x86 or 68000? Perl or Python?
Still Perl is more popular than Python, x86 is more popular that any
processor, and (insert that hateful OS) is more popular than UNIX.
   It seems that society and especially business choose not the best, but
worst alternative. So if we want to make Python more popular we should make
it worse (well, I am kidding... to some extent).

   Actually I personnaly don't want to increase Python and Zope popularity
beyond some bounds (this time I am not kidding). Popularity is the hallmark
of mediocrity. And what is worse, popularity will (actually, already's)
draw windoze lamers with all their idiotic questions (who needs to read the
FAQs and docs, really?), and the best newsgroup comp.lang.python starts
looking more and more like comp.lang.p*.misc.

Oleg.
-- 
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.