[acqq]

The short (but perfect) JWZ text is here:

http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

"that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again."

But the longer one, containing more or less the quote I first approximated, I just can't find. If I remeber he wrote about Netscape, the code for FTP and how long it took to get it right in all edge cases, and then it was thrown away.

[themusicgod1]

This is written in 2003: I do not think it is a coincidence that Kent Beck is credited ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development ) with re/discovering Test Driven Development in that year.

TDD can go horribly wrong, too -- but if your tests are on high-enough-level functionality, and you maintain them, then they can encompass the lessons you learn from fucking up every time you do it. Writing & Maintaining tests isn't fun, just as fixing bugs isn't fun -- so in spirit these kinds of arguments hold just as much sway: there are fun parts of programming, and there are parts of programming that are significantly less fun, but even if you fork and start from scratch, it is feasible to have a checklist of bugs/features developed in the order that they are developed initially.

Do most open source projects do this, even the more well-maintained? Of course not. However, if people are seriously worried about this phenomenon, that's probably one of the ways developed in the decade since this essay was published to approach it.

[wglb]

I hardly think PHK is ADT at all. There are often good engineering reasons to rewrite software. I think Joel's point is that it is more often undertaken for wrong reasons.

[acqq]

There's the software that works, he gets the money to find the bugs and fix them, he decides to write from the scratch something that certainly isn't the replacement of the existing software except for some specific users. That is very ADT, exactly to JWZ's definition:

"This is, I think, the most common way for my bug reports to open source software projects to ever become closed. I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version."

http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

He got the money to look for the bugs and to fix them (hard). He instead goes to make the fully new undiscoverd bugs in fully new (his own) code (easy).