[Catalyst] Re: So, what do we want in the -next- book?

[Aristotle Pagaltzis]

* Jonathan Rockway <jon at jrock.us> [2008-04-28 06:40]:
> Am I the only person here that has ever started a job and had
> to just dive into the code, code without docs or tests?
>
> I assume not, but nobody is asking your boss to write a book
> about how your internal code works. You just dive in and
> understand it.

Just because largely undocumented internal codebases are the norm
doesn’t mean they are an inevitable fate.

    Anything that takes more than a week of effort requires a
    design document, with specific sections that have to be
    filled out, and with feedback from primary and secondary
    reviewers of your choice. The net result is that for any
    significant piece of code at Google, you can find almost a
    whole book about it internally, and a well-written one at
    that.
    —Steve Yegge

But in any case, most companies are not in the business of
creating free software libraries that hope to attract programmers
as users and contributors, so the comparison is a category error
to begin with.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>