Subject: Re: Nobody in the world understands Gnu's 'ld'.
From: [email-masked] (Ian Lance Taylor)

28 Mar 1997 05:34:04 -0800
Approved: [email-masked]
Distribution: cygnus
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In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]> (message from Fergus
	Henderson on Wed, 26 Mar 1997 18: 17:04 +1100 (EST))
Original-Sender: [email-masked]

   From: Fergus Henderson <[email-masked]>
   Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 18:17:04 +1100 (EST)

   > Mind you, I'm not going to defend the way that BFD is written.
   > [...] I've tried to clean up some of the more egregious
   > problems.  Unfortunately, the cost of rewriting BFD is high.

   Right.  So what is the solution?  Well, in the case of BFD, perhaps the
   damage is already done -- the cost would have been a lot cheaper if it
   was done right in the first place.  However, even now, Cygnus should
   seriously consider spending the money to improve the quality of their
   existing source code, because it may be a *good investment*.

   Regardless of what happens with BFD, Cygnus ought to ensure that
   whatever code they write is well documented and properly structured.
   This will result in products that are easier to maintain, easier
   to extend, and as a result in the long term the products will be better.

   > I'd love to have some documentation if you care to write some and
   > contribute it.  This is, after all, free software.  It improves by
   > contributions.

   Documentation should not be an after-thought.  If Cygnus thinks that
   it can economize by not bothering with documentation or not bothering
   to write properly structured code, then they are wrong -- it may result
   in some short-term gains, but in the long run it will cost them a lot.
   It is much more difficult (and expensive) for someone to come along
   afterwards and write documentation than for the person doing the
   original work to write the documentation properly in the first place.

I'll note that I agree with all of this.  In particular, we've
certainly discussed whether rewriting BFD is a good investment or
not.  There is no obvious right answer.

People may think that Cygnus is a large software company with hundreds
of programmers designing products.  This is not the case.  It was even
less the case when BFD and the linker were written.  At that time,
Cygnus was a handful of programmers working with free software and
struggling to succeed by meeting customer demands very quickly.  It's
easy to second guess the decisions made at that time.  In fact,
though, you weren't there, and neither was I.  Programming decisions
are not made in an academic environment.  They are made in the real
world, under the pressure of time and money.

Ian
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