Re: Hokay, I officially give up...

On 5/22/09, Mathieu Bouchard <matju-i8w/[email protected]> wrote:

> Ok, so, for every context, no matter what scale of standards they already
> use, you'd shift their standards so that, no matter what they achieve,
> they'd judge it as "barely works"? No matter the improvements made, the
> scale can be shifted so that whatever has been done still gets called
> "barely works". What's the point?

Well, besides what Ron said... suppose you're writing a high
availability enterprise system. Failover becomes a real requirement. A
system that can't handle failover to another site, at best, "almost
works". A system that can do failover, but only with the correct
admins to babysit and deal with surprises, "barely works". Once you
get to that point, your choice is to either deeply test and fully
automate your failover so it's guaranteed to work, or settle for the
idea that it can be done with the right babysitters. That's where the
resource commitment will end at most organizations - barely works.

Now, if you're writing an online catalog site for an antique store,
would you even BOTHER designing a failover system?  No, because it
would be a tremendous waste of resources - even though the risk of
system failure is probably as high or higher than the high
availability enterprise system. So the requirements vary.

In order to rise above "barely works", software would have to
significantly exceed requirements, no?  And who wastes resources on
significantly exceeding requirements, AND maintaining that level of
excellence over the entire project lifecycle?
-- 
-dave

"Why doesn't the Earth fall?  How can you walk upon it?  It's the
music.  It's the music of the Earth, and the Sun, and the Stars.  It's
the music of yourself, vibrating.  Yes, you are music too! You're all
instruments.  Everyone is supposed to be playing their part in this
vast Arkestra of the Cosmos."

-Sun Ra

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