[Ktechlab-devel] A reflection on the KDE4 porting... software rewrites are not a good idea

[Zoltan Padrah]

Hi,

as anybody can see, the port of ktechlab from kde3 to kde4 is taking
way to much time. This is because rewriting a software usually takes
much more time than fixing a buggy/limited/... exiting one. Apparently
I had to learn this lesson the hard way.

As a conclusion, I started porting the codebase from 0.3 series to
KDE4. The first commit has been the most painful (and huge), because I
had to make the code compile again. Then after enough bugs are fixed,
I hope to get a release out, before distributions drop KDE4 (KDE5 is
already out).

As an insightful reading on the topic of the rewriting software, I
recommend this article:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

Here is a teaser:

"It's a bit smarmy of me to criticize them for waiting so long between
releases. They didn't do it on purpose, now, did they?

Well, yes. They did. They did it by making the single worst strategic
mistake that any software company can make:

They decided to rewrite the code from scratch."


 Zoltan