On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:21:31 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Why Vista Release Date Really Slipped
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| "A team manager for Windows for 5 years has decided to write a
>| blog-essay about what caused Windows Vista project to miss the due date.
>| Philip tells us in the blog, that Windows developers are writing an
>| average of 5000 lines of code (which is *only* 1200 lines less than
>| the national average of 6200 lines of code per year). He addresses
>| issues like the Vista code being too complicated, the processes the
>| developers have to follow too complex and a lot more. All in all it
>| gives a nice insight into why Vista will be late, from a
>| different perspective.
> `----
>
> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/15/0252211&from=rss
Indeed. It's been obvious for a long time that Windows needs a
revitalization. Windows has never been an "elegant" design. This doesn't
mean that other platforms, considered to be more "elegant" are necessarily
better overall, though. They have the potential to be, but often times
fall short of the mark.
Givevn a perfect universe, hand written assembly language will outperform
compiled C or C++ any day of the year. But it's quite possible for hand
written assembly to actually perform worse than averagely written C or C++,
and far worse than well written C or C++.
The fact of the matter is, software complexity is mandatory these days, and
it will only get worse. Consumers demand highly featureful, complex
aapplications that do everything. Creating those kinds of apps "elegantly"
takes time, lots of time, and will always lose out to the guy that cuts
corners... because customers also want these apps NOW, which means that if
you want to be competitive, you have to cut corners too.
Open source has the advantage of not having a commercial schedule to live
up to (most of the time, anyways. There are exceptions). They also don't
usually have VP's breathing down their necks to get this or that feature
done.
On the other hand, there's nobody pushing them to get certain things done
either, which means they either don't get done, or get done whenever they
feel like it, or it gets done "just enough" to scratch the itch. Often
times this isn't good enough for consumers, so they choose the more
consumer oriented option that panders to them.
Much of open source are the "kit" cars of yesteryear. They give you all
the parts and say "Enjoy". Lots of people like that. Some people might
not like it, and pay someone else to do it for them. The majority will
just go down to their local major car dealership, though.
You might argue that the big Linux distro's are like the major car dealers,
but they're not. They're more like the Tuckers or the Bentley's. While
cool, they're just not practical for most people. They could be, though,
if they had the kind of money that GM or Ford or Toyota has.
Bad car analogies aside, Microsoft's success cannot be completely
attributed to it's marketing ability and/or it's "Monopolistic" practices.
The fact is, a *LOT* of people like Windows, even when they've been exposed
to Linux or MacOS. There are reasons for that. Reasons most Linux people
seem to want to pretend don't exist.
All that, despite being an "inelegant" design.
|
|
