[ENH] EventEnhancement-nk

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Thu Jun 19 16:08:38 UTC 2003


> Instant debugging material, which results in better
> understanding and a better implementation or design.  See 
> John's email, it's a great explanation already.

With which I disagree. Not about the fact that better understanding of the
system leads to better design (that's certainly true) but the fact of the
matter is that this is *always* the case if one is forced to review a system
(at least from my POV there is not a single piece of code where I think it
couldn't be done better). John's argument falls into a category where I
would claim that, yes, he is right given that
a) the person doing this is smart enough
b) she has enough time to really get to understand the system
c) she does ultimately come up with a better solution

In a contrary situation, where (for example) that memory leak prevents
shipping some app which needs to get out of the door tomorrow, you don't
know the code very well and you understand the overall design goals, you
will end up with quite the contrary - lousy hacks which make the system
fragile.

So I'd be very cautious about making claims like the above on general
grounds. Too much depends on the concrete situation.

Cheers,
  - Andreas



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