[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
selpa'i seladwa@hidden.email [engelang] scripsit:
> Everytime you say that ("lojban is not a loglang", "lojban is a terrible
> language" :P ), I die a little inside, even though I think I agree with
> you that one can do much better than Lojban did.
Here's Fred Brooks, from his list of the woes of programming from _The
Mythical Man-Month_ (in Chapter 1, "The Tar Pit"):
The last woe, and sometimes the last straw, is that the product
over which one has labored so long appears to be obsolete upon
(or before) completion. Already colleagues and competitors are
in hot pursuit of new and better ideas. Already the displacement
of one's thought-child is not only conceived, but scheduled.
This always seems worse than it really is. The new and better
product is generally not *available* when one completes his own;
it is only talked about. It too, will require months [or years]
of development. The real tiger is never a match for the paper
one, *unless actual use is wanted* [emphasis added]. Then the
virtues of reality have a satisfaction all their own.
Of course the technological base on which one builds is
*always* advancing. As soon as one freezes a design, it becomes
obsolete in terms of its concepts. But implementation of real
products demands phasing and quantizing. The obsolescence
of an implementation must be measured against other existing
implementations, not against unrealized concepts. The challenge
and the mission are to find real solutions to real problems on
actual schedules with available resources.
I hope that helps you feel better.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@hidden.email
Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes of a creatific thinkerizer.
--Peter da Silva