| ??? 04/07/12 20:48 Read: times |
#187052 - Good points! Responding to: ???'s previous message |
I have been thinking myself that the major stumbling block with much open-source code is the documentation (or, more likely, the lack thereof).
I guess the fundamental problem is that open-source is written by coders "for fun" (as opposed to, "for profit") - and most coders do not consider documentation to be "fun". Richard Erlacher said:
documentation should be complete, accepted, blessed, with Holy Water sprinkled upon it, before the first software weenie is allowed to sit down at his computer ... firm and "absolutely etched in stone" documentation It is very seldom possible for the documentation to be "absolutely etched in stone" at the start of a project with any significant level of novelty or innovation - in other words, any development project. There are too many things that just cannot be known at the outset. But I thoroughly agree that there does need to be a clearly-defined set of requirements, constraints, etc. what, exactly, the project's work product is supposed to do, how it's to do it, and how large and slow it's allowed to be Indeed. And there needs to be an agreed change process: there will be changes that need to be considered - so there needs to be an agreed way to asses the impact, and decide whether or not it is avoidable/necessary/worthwhile/essential... So, back to your original point, you do need something as a starting point - but it is usually not helpful to consider it "absolutely etched in stone". Too often half the code is written before requirements analysis is performed. Indeed! |
