[LON-CAPA-dev] lonc/lond

lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org lon-capa-dev@mail.lon-capa.org
Fri, 8 Mar 2002 10:50:00 EST 

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>>There is actually only one question: why did this ever work at all?

Here's one possible answer:  it was debugged to life.  Since the system is so 
gargantuan I'm sure when it exhibited "correct" behavior it was assumed 
working; though never actually proven (mathematically or otherwise) to work 
correctly.  When competing for financial resources it's no surprise to see 
something thrown together at first to prove how beneficial it could be so as 
to keep funding.  If unlimited resources were available I'm sure parts of the 
project would be considered "throw-away" code or just a prototype of actual 
functionality and re-done later.  However, this is obviously not possible at 
this stage of production.  This is what one of my CSE profs would call a 
"Software Engineering Nightmare".  I'm happy to be a part of it anyway though 
:)

-Josh

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<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT  SIZE=2>&gt;&gt;There is actually only one question: why did this ever work at all?
<BR>
<BR>Here's one possible answer: &nbsp;it was debugged to life. &nbsp;Since the system is so gargantuan I'm sure when it exhibited "correct" behavior it was assumed working; though never actually proven (mathematically or otherwise) to work correctly. &nbsp;When competing for financial resources it's no surprise to see something thrown together at first to prove how beneficial it could be so as to keep funding. &nbsp;If unlimited resources were available I'm sure parts of the project would be considered "throw-away" code or just a prototype of actual functionality and re-done later. &nbsp;However, this is obviously not possible at this stage of production. &nbsp;This is what one of my CSE profs would call a "Software Engineering Nightmare". &nbsp;I'm happy to be a part of it anyway though :)
<BR>
<BR>-Josh</FONT></HTML>

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