[PRL] Fwd: Linspire/Freespire Core OS Team and Haskell

[Eli Barzilay]

On May 16, Joe Marshall wrote:
> >From     http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
> 
> > Back to that two page function. Yes, I know, it's just a simple
> > function to display a window, but it has grown little hairs and
> > stuff on it and nobody knows why.  Well, I'll tell you why: those
> > are bug fixes. One of them fixes that bug that Nancy had when she
> > tried to install the thing on a computer that didn't have Internet
> > Explorer. Another one fixes that bug that occurs in low memory
> > conditions.  Another one fixes that bug that occurred when the
> > file is on a floppy disk and the user yanks out the disk in the
> > middle. That LoadLibrary call is ugly but it makes the code work
> > on old versions of Windows 95.
> 
> If that were *truly* the problem, his proposed solution would be obvious.
> 
> Hair is this:
>   Those lines are there because Nancy didn't know there was a library
> routine that did it better and more abstractly.  That line is there
> because the class system is hiding an instance variable we need, but
> we can't expose it because the name collides with a million other
> instance variables because some idiot thought it would be clever to
> name every instance variable with the same name and use visibility
> control to emulate pseudo-lexical scoping poorly.  Those lines are
> there because someone, in their infinitessimal wisdom, didn't think
> a `disk' was an important enough concept to have its own
> abstraction.  That line is there because `no human would type *that*
> much at the command line'.  Those lines are there because... well,
> hmmm.... they are provably a no-op... someone had too little sleep.
> 
> And don't forget the little feature enhancements that end up getting
> wedged in here or there as afterthoughts.

This is exactly why I hated that thing -- your version could easily be
a counter example to his long drivel^H^H^H^H^Hrant.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!