Re: const local vs. member

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:03:27 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<88041959-12bc-4819-9f57-c392f4e4f232@googlegroups.com>
On Friday, April 26, 2013 12:27:40 AM UTC+1, Victor Bazarov wrote:

On 4/25/2013 6:57 PM, Christopher Pisz wrote:

[...] When a project has a backlog of
defects long enough to last a 20 person team a lifetime, one has to ask,
why did you write all of this code that is already available and tested
for you!

Sorry to rant :)


I think actions like that should be attributed in part to the sense of
superiority some people have (believing that they can do it better than
anyone else, or at least most anyone else) and in part to a severe case
of distrust ("<gasp> there can be bugs in those third-party libraries
and components! who's going to fix those, and how?!")


The distrust is probably justified. Third party librarys fall
into three categories:

  - Well written. These are very, very rare. In fact, the only
    one I have actually used (not really a library, but) is the
    Python interpreter (despite being written in C).

  - Not necessarily well written, but widely used, so you can
    pretty much count on most bugs having been caught by some
    previous user, and already fixed. You're almost certainly
    using some of these now: Linux would be an example, and
    although I've not seen the source code to confirm it, the
    history of Solaris and Windows makes me think that they are
    also in this category. While the code certainly wouldn't
    meet the quality requirements of any serious company, there
    have been enough victimes before you that any major errors
    have probably been seen and fixed. (Most of Boost also
    falls into this category, although unlike many other
    providers, they do seem to at least test the libraries before
    delivering them.)

  - Junk.

As it happens, most third party software (open source or not)
falls into the last category. For reasons that escape me, most
organizations which know how to write quality software are
delivering complete systems, and not libraries.

 At the same
time, sadly, it's the sign of utter immaturity of the development group.
  Imagine that shoemakers would start by skinning the animals and
tanning the hides themselves...


Imagine that the people skinning the animals and tanning the
hides did it as poorly as most third party software deliverers.

--
James

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