Re: OT Re: virus warning

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

Robert: "they actually DO know something about the software they've
written. That may seem preposterous, but... hey, they wrote it.
And I know myself that everybody makes mistakes from time to
time when writing software, or doesn't foresee some contingency."

The more complicated the software, the more likely it was written by
several committees, and there's the rub. Two sorts of errors are liable
to creep into source code when multiple committees are involved:

1. Committee A (responsible for hardware drivers, for example) does not
communicate thoroughly with Committees B,C,D,and E (responsible for the
user interface, in-house application support, plugins and third-party
app support, or whatever)--leading to built-in incompatibilities which
were intentional but not intended to be incompatible.

2. There is the risk of mechanical puns--some bit pattern gets
inadvertently double-assigned to two different functions, and nobody was
sufficiently conversant with the whole source code to spot it before it
went to market.

And so, with every service pack, the patchwork gets patchier, and
workarounds become permanent fixtures, because completely re-writing the
code is too costly in man-hours. Makes you appreciate what a gem
editor.exe is.

I once thought I made a mistake--that was back in 1989--but it turned
out I was wrong, I didn't.