On Thu, 2022-08-04 at 17:36 -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 04, 2022 at 04:06:18AM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> ...
> >
> > When I write Free Software, I'm one of those "meh, good enough" guys, although
> > I'd
> > phrase it "Awww Riiight, good enough!". The reason is that perfectionists never
> > finish.
>
> Might this be why we're using linux instead of Hurd?

I never thought of it, but it's a possible cause of Hurd never taking the lead.

One of the very smart things Linus did was to forego the pie-in-the-sky dream of the
theorists, the microkernel, to do the kernel he could actually get done all by
himself, the regular kernel.

I'm reminded of Perl6, which in 1999 we all knew was going to take over the world.
Heck, Sams Publishing offered to have me be the main author of an upcoming Perl6
Unleashed. But instead of just fixing a few of Perl 5's biggest problem, they shot
for the moon, during which time Python and Ruby gladly claimed all of Perl's
mindshare. Today Perl 6 is a language called Raku, and for all I know it's a great
language, but in the persuit of the perfect at the turn of the century they gave up
the good, and now Raku is a minor league player.

When I started the VimOutliner project, instead of writing it from scratch, I used
Vim as the engine and just added a few scripts. So I was able to create and release
it in about a week.

Examples abound: Eric Raymond's fetchmail. Runit, which is so simple I could
maintain it if I had to. The various NetworkManager alternatives that have sprung up
at Devuan.

Perfectionists never finish, and the perfect is the enemy of the good.

SteveT