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> My reading (of the whole thread; it may not have been clear from that
> single message) was that he was talking about relying on vendors' or
> standards body specs as the basis for your development.
If so, he's wise to be cautious. Aside from the question of whether
the writers know enough to update the specs, in my experience, they
are often an after thought in a documentation project, and not
updated as new versions come out. In one project, I found that the
specs had not been updated through four versions of a piece of
hardware - not even easily verifiable ones such as physical
dimensions and weight. If someone can't notice that a product is
half the size and a quarter of the weight listed, then the chances
of catching subtler changes seems thin.
At times, of course, companies don't publish complete specs, either,
in order to keep work proprietary. Hewlett-Packard, for example, has
been challenged for not revealing the inner workings of many of its
printer drivers. This is a common complaint in open source or free
software projects.
But I find the comment interesting on another level, too. No matter
what the context, Torvalds seems to suggest that you routinely have
to test and possibly improvise during a project. Given that Torvalds
has run a large and complex project like the Linux kernel for years,
this perspective might be worth listening to.
--
Bruce Byfield, Progeny Linux Systems
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com
"You bought all the props for a world that never was,
Now there's holes in the mirrors and less and less applause,
We are all ungrateful bastards, like a dog that bit your hand,
All these years and you still don't understand."
- OysterBand, "Too Late Now"
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