[lug] Software Projects as well....

[Scott A. Herod]

Related to Tkil's early note and my conversation with him last night,
what are the thoughts about some of the big, and not so big, open-source
projects.  My first and last instruction in writing software consisted
of flowcharting and coding matrix solvers in FORTRAN 66.  Recently, I 
looked into a couple of big (pseudo-)open-source projects, Mozilla and
OpenOffice, as well as learning to use VC++ with MS's COM specification.

The code and design of these projects make me cringe in horror.
( So does perl but that's a separate issue. )  Are these things the
future of software development or an aberration?

It occurs to me that the linux kernel itself is another example of
a large open-source project.  In a way, it is the antithesis of the
two projects that I mentioned above.  I also found it extremely easy
to quickly become conversant with it and to begin making changes to it.


On an only somewhat related note.  Here's a funny article.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep01/speak.html


Scott