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To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (1079)9/9/1999 8:37:00 AM
From: Eric Wells  Read Replies (3) of 1794
 
>>There is no central committee and there are no rules.

Mitch - thanks for your message.

Believe it or not, I have actually worked on several software development projects - none that have anything to do with Linux - but several custom software applications that are being used by Fortune 500 customers (mostly in finance departments). I currently run my own company that specializes in developing custom software solutions.

My experience has taught me that when you have a team of developers working on a project, it is necessary to have some guidelines in place to coordinate efforts. If you have one developer that refuses to document their code or refuses to use any standard for naming variables, well you may end up with a piece of code that is very difficult to manage in the future.

Truly free-form development could potentially lead to chaos. Again, I have no exposure to the Linux development community - so I have no idea how dispersed developers go about handling the sharing and integration of their code into Linux. But there must be some rules. Are there not?

As for biological evolution, to which you allude - it's a very interesting analogy, and one that is very appropriate in talking about software development. Biological structures are actually full of rules. A strand of DNA is in essence a set of rules. Sure, evolution is a result of the breaking of those rules to form strands that have greater survivability. But the process of evolution is one of minor mutations in the rule set - evolution does not occur through chaos, and a total disregard for the rules.

Thanks for your message.

-Eric Wells
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