RE: Unix philosophy under the gun?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, August 3, 2001 at 10:32:50 (-0500), Thornley, David wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: Unix philosophy under the gun?
>
> 
> Nor is it necessary for everybody in a shop to be a toolsmith.  The Unix
> way of doing things seems to work very well with a relatively small (but
> greater than zero) number of toolsmiths.

YES!

That's another thing that's very very very important for people do wo
software development for a living.

In the good old mainframe days these people were called systems
programmers.  They built, tweaked, and hacked upon, the things the other
programmers used.

You don't even need a full-time toolsmith, but you really must have one
available in the wings who has an established and good working
relationship with at least a few of your top applications developers;
even (especiall?) if you buy your entire software process off the shelf.

On the other hand I've met very few programmers who when given the
chance won't at least express their desire to improve the tools they
use.  The ones who can't even do that are in the wrong job (but
sometimes they make good QA people or something similarly rote).

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

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