old code is good code!

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Sat Apr 16 16:35:43 UTC 2005



> Comanche: Comanche is the older  web server for Squeak, and is still 
> very widely used. Recent  discontent with Comanche within the Squeak 
> community, combined with the arrival of Swazoo, puts its future  into 
> doubt. Concerns include the lack of a dedicated  maintainer, the 
> dilapidation of the code base, and the increasing problems with the 
> installation  process on modern versions of Squeak. For these reasons,  
> Comanche  was not included; Practical Squeak uses Swazoo instead.  If 
> you wish to use Comanche, please consult the mailing  list for 
> instructions.

Comanche works great.  I've been a happy user for years.  Maybe Swazoo
has improvements, but Comanche is a proven platform.  Let's not trash
our good software in an effort to promote the new stuff.

This is a big peet peeve of mine in Squeak for the last few years.  Old
software is GOOD software.  Old software has the bugs ironed out, and it
has the most desired features implemented.

We seem to have a fallacy that we can automatically improve things by
rewriting from scratch.  Sometimes that is true, but frequently the
opposite is the case, especially if the rewrite is only done because of
a general sense that the code has become complicated [1].  Rewriting
from scratch means that we are spending time on a from-scratch XML
library [2a,2b] instead of starting with industrial-quality existing
software  [3].  It means that we have a half-refactored sockets mess
with no new functionality over the old stuff but plenty of new bugs 
[4].  It means we move backwards in robust parsing of multipart email
messages [5], instead of fixing up the good software that we have.


I'm all for exciting, experimental code--it puts the "cool" into Squeak.
 However, we also need to value our existing stable software.  Heck,
even if your main interest is to try crazy coding experiments, wouldn't
you like to have stable XML, SMTP, HTTP, and RFC822 support to base it
on?  We won't get there with calls to rewrite code just because it is
old [6].


Old code is good code.


-Lex Spoon

==== url's ====

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
[2a] http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/505
[2b] http://lists.tunes.org/archives/slate/2005-February/001130.html
[3] http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/VisualWorks/VisualWorks+XML+Framework
[4] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/087926.html
[5] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2002-April/039013.html
[6] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088161.html



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