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From: lennox@paris.sw.stratus.com (Craig Scott Lennox)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Clean Design vs. Source Code
Keywords: Mac, DOS, source code, Vogon poetry, architecture
Message-ID: <598@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>
Date: 19 Jan 90 19:35:31 GMT
Sender: usenet@lectroid.sw.stratus.com
Reply-To: lennox@paris.sw.stratus.com (Craig Scott Lennox)
Organization: Stratus Computer, Software Engineering.
Lines: 18

I've decided it's time to ditch my clunky old (but reliable, and state of the
art when it was bought) 4.77 MHz 8088 XT to something a bit more modern.  I'm
tempted to go Mac (for reasons of taste; I DON'T WANT TO START A PC-MAC WAR HERE!)
but I've gotten quite used to kernel-hacking DOS.

What do you think ... is it better to have a badly-designed, kludgey OS that you
have the source code to, or better to have a well-designed OS whose innermost
workings are a mystery.  From a hacker's point of view.

In the same vein ... is it preferable to hack a kludgey segmented architecture over
a neatly-designed one because the former is more of a challenge?


--

|    Craig Scott Lennox -- Stratus Computer - Marlborough,  MA     |
|           Dyslexic Existentialism:  "Is there a dog?"            |
| Find out what I really said -- send for your free decoder ring!  |