[PD-dev] per-thread storage in Pd in support of pdlib - discussion?

[Mathieu Bouchard]

Le 2012-02-16 à 01:06:00, Rich E a écrit :

> I think it's something like a team developing on the same codebase; 2-3 
> people definitely gets the job done faster than 1, partly because it is 
> easy to discuss your work (or in computing, synchronize).

There are few parallels to be made from teamwork of developers, especially 
nowadays. The problems solved by computers are of a different nature than 
those solved by those who program them. Problems tend to separate in two 
wildly different parts : the part that the computer does ; and the part of 
figuring out what the computer should be doing.

Often, the interactions between 2 people (or a few people) make a boost 
that is hard to have when working alone, because of the mental patterns 
involved, that often lead 2 people to catch more mistakes and do it more 
quickly than twice the speed of 1 person working alone. There is no such 
effect for parallelism within programmes.

> But 4, 10, or 60 people working on the same project, well that doesn't 
> get you anything more than the first 3.  At that point, you need to 
> redesign into components (whether it's your project or code).

Wait a minute, do you mean that the first 3 developers didn't design their 
programme into components in the first place ? What's a « component » 
here ?

But also, projects are not all created equal, components aren't created 
equal, teams are not created equal, and developers are all different from 
each other. It's hard to find something general to say about projects in 
general (though it's easy to pretend to have found something).

So, wild claims about 10 people not being better than 3 is some kind of 
fiction. I mean that although there are surely many cases in which it 
would be true, it largely depends on who you pick, in which kind of 
project, that has been structured in which way.

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| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC