On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:04:02 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Windows, on the other hand, is a vast lump of software purposely
> designed to be difficult to understand.

There's the fallacy of your argument.  Windows' code isn't purposely 
designed to be difficult to understand - that's something that generally 
naturally happens when a project becomes very large.

The Linux kernel could be said to be very difficult to understand because 
of its complexity, but ask any of the developers if they intentionally 
make it difficult to understand, and you'll probably get laughed off the 
planet.

Again, as much as I dislike Microsoft (mostly for their business 
practices more than anything), I can't attribute to malice the problems 
with their software.  Whether you develop closed-source or open-source 
software, to get your changes committed to the official source tree, you 
have to have a pretty good idea of what you're doing.  In the OSS world, 
you don't gain points by trying to obfuscate your code and make it 
difficult to understand.  The same is true in the closed-source world.

Jim

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