alan@APPLE.COM (Alan Mimms) (09/27/89)
I'd like to respond to the SEVERAL threads of xpert lately that have unabashedly (I couldn't help it) BASHED the HELL out of MIT. You know who you are. Every week, I come across cases where someone at MIT has done something that is positively GODLIKE. Unfortunately, they're HUMAN. They do, infrequently, make mistakes. This business about default visuals and the other business about "buggy" sample server code just go to underscore the fact that the people at MIT, DEC, IBM, HP, Sun, and, yes, Apple are creating a thing that is wonderful enough for thousands of people to take a crack at it. Many of them like it a lot. Others just can't see anything good to say, so they say bad things. May I suggest that if you find something about the various aspects of the X Window System that could be improved that you IMPROVE IT rather than complaining? Criticism without suggestion on how to fix the problem is NOT helpful (unless you're soliciting suggestions). Sorry. I feel much better now. alan
paquin@kahua.esd.sgi.com (Tom Paquin) (09/28/89)
. . . > This business about default visuals and the other business about "buggy" > sample server code just go to underscore the fact that the people at > MIT, DEC, IBM, HP, Sun, and, yes, Apple are creating a thing that is > wonderful enough for thousands of people to take a crack at it. Many > of them like it a lot. Others just can't see anything good to say, so > they say bad things. Something I learned a long time ago at IBM (of all places) is that the quality of software is directly (*not* indirectly) proportional to "maintenance" demands made on it. The better the software, the more people use it, and the more they care about the nuances of its use. Software of lesser usefulness or quality is quietly unused, or, worse, tolerated for very short necessary bursts. So take the bellyaching as a compliment! :) ( PS IBM took care of my problem by holding most of the X code I wrote <ppc, ibm8514> as proprietary, so people can't muck with it, so I never got complaints. Interesting strategy. I also never got free repairs by the ever-so-eager public...) Opinions are mine, not SGI's +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Those who sacrifice freedom for security soon find that | | they have neither. -Benjamin Franklin | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tom Paquin paquin@sgi.com | | Silicon Graphics Computer Systems 415-335-1438 | | Mountain View, CA 94039 | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
steve@acorn.co.uk (Steve "Daffy" Hunt) (10/02/89)
In article <714@odin.SGI.COM> paquin@kahua.esd.sgi.com (Tom Paquin) writes: > >Something I learned a long time ago at IBM (of all places) is that the >quality of software is directly (*not* indirectly) proportional to >"maintenance" demands made on it. The better the software, the more >people use it, and the more they care about the nuances of its use. >Software of lesser usefulness or quality is quietly unused, or, >worse, tolerated for very short necessary bursts. Incorrect. Usefulness and quality are not the same thing. Consider MS-DOS, one of the most widely-used pieces of software in the world. High-quality? Hardly. The number of people using a piece of software is might be related to its usefulness, but the proportion of those users who complain about it is related to its quality.