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From: farren@gethen.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: software ICs vs. libraries
Message-ID: <244@gethen.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Oct-87 05:03:43 EST
Article-I.D.: gethen.244
Posted: Thu Oct 22 05:03:43 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Oct-87 06:53:17 EST
References: <3405@ece-csc.UUCP> <638@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: Sci-Fido - Unix in Oakland
Lines: 21

In article <3349@uw-june.UUCP> bnfb@uw-june.UUCP (Bjorn Freeman-Benson) writes:
>A "software-IC" would seem to be a more thourghly thought out, better
>designed, unit of software that could be used for multiple purposes.

I must confess to a failure to understand what it is that you are proposing
here.  You have said that the Macintosh Toolbox routines aren't what you
are talking about, and it seems to me that they, as well as the similar
libraries available on most complex machines today, are about as close
as you would want to come to a "Software IC".  If the routines are going
to be flexible enough to be used for different purposes, they are also
going to be complex enough to be difficult to use correctly for any of 
them.  If they are simple enough to be used correctly by "the masses", as
you put it, then it seems to me that they will also be much less flex-
ible.  How do you propose to solve this dilemma?  Examples, please.


-- 
----------------
Michael J. Farren      "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness
unisoft!gethen!farren   that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.arpa             Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"