Re: speed of text applications...

[hal@budapest.math.macalstr.edu (Harold Byron Bouma)]

David A Lyons writes

> I don't recommend everybody go out and write directly to the screen.  But
> for special-purpose tools like GSBug and Nifty List, it makes sense. 
> 
> Specifically, I do *not* agree with the FTA philosophy of re-inventing
> the wheel as a matter of principle.  Life is too short not to leverage
> off other people's work, or to do work which other people can build on.
> 
> I would prefer to see people build *better* tools for their own use
> and to give or sell to others, rather than avoiding tools.

	Heh. "Life is short, Play Hard." But the above is true. Software  
development already takes a long time. Why add to it by rewriting everything  
from scratch? I mean between school and other projects, I haven't even touched  
NBA in the last 6 months alone. Imagine how much longer though it would take me  
to write the file I/O routines and stuff just because "it wasn't fast enough  
for me" Most of the stuff unless its speed dependant is fine. I don't want to  
write my own number multipler for NBA, thats too time consuming. I can just  
call _multiply and it does it for me.

	But if you do have something good out there, let others use it. You've  
spent a lot of time on it, why not save others from that so they can do more  
productive things? If it takes someone 200 hours to write a Soundsmith player,  
and someone else needs to use one, thats 200 hours he/she can save if you share  
the code and do more productive programming than simply "reinventing the wheel"

| Hal Bouma                            | Send mail to: HBouma@Macalstr.edu    |
| Macalester College, St. Paul, MN.    | and           HBouma@Macalstr.Bitnet |
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