most people care even less, as they have Gnome or KDE running ontop of their window managers.

That's pretty much the essence of my point. Pretty much all window managers are interchangable, which implies they are equivalent. If they weren't equivalent, you wouldn't be able to swap one for another. And if they are equivalent, why bother maintaining the existance of more than one?

I don't really think it is fair comparing window managers to MSWindows - MSwindows was a desktop environment, something that the Unix world didn't really have until KDE/GNOME (unless you want to count Sun's miserable attempts).

Regards your (sarcastic) comments on CPAN, - my apologies, it's hard to see that humour in writing sometimes. Your slightly broken English makes it hard to see your point there.

What you appear to overlook twice now, is that CPAN modules sometimes do use 1970's code. A lot of modules are thin wrappers around C code, some of which is quite old (usually not 70's though). So there's your code reuse. I don't see the redundancy at all. In fact, I request that you back up your comments about redundancy in CPAN, because I can't see it.

The only redundancy that gets into CPAN is when people upload their redundant code, as you have declared that you intend to.

You also appear to be suffering massive confusion between the idea of redundant code, and reusing and improving on code. You are confusing 'use what is already written' with 'everything has already been written'. CPAN's existance is not built in redundant because there is the constant addition of new code that has never been seen before in the world.

This point is so obvious to everyone else on this thread that it seems apparent you are just trolling. So I guess I've been trolled and hence I lost, but I don't think I'll insert my quarter for another round.

Sorry... I misanswered last time. I was under heavy sleep deprived in the response that you replied to.

What I should have said, and have been knocking myself out to say was instead, something about natural selection or something. I was sleep deprived when I came up with what I should have said--and have forgotten it.

All I can remember of it is the idea of the pride of being the person to write the currently used software. Like wouldn't you want to be maintaining the code that runs the window manager for GNOME? (KDE has its own window manager, apparently). Or rather, one of the choices. I would say that is good resume material... might need to be updated every now and then, but you have to take that first chance you will not make it when there are thirty other software choices.

If you do not develop because the market is satuated, really, you are losing without trying. It is an opportunity. Sure you have to work at it, but you won't make you mark if you don't try.

Therre was more to this argument, but I cannot remember it right now--so it is no help to you, and even less help to me.

-- Jamie Payne

That's cool. It's nice of you to swing by and explain what was up, but honestly I'd already forgotten the whole thread. I hope whatever was depriving you of sleep eases up. Personally, I've got a lot of time for people who fly off the handle every now and again. The life experiences that brought me to that way of thinking would take a lot of explaining and wouldn't make much sense to anyone anyway, so you'll have to take my word for it :)

I think I can see where you were you were going with your points.

Natural selection is often quoted by computer people who possibly don't see all its ramifications (see my homenode for why I know more about natural selection than computing :). The popularity of programs can probably be described better by economics than evolution (e.g. programs don't die, can't breed: marketplace theories probably can do better).

I can see your point about pride of writing popular software, but the people who are maintaining it are often in that position because they were among the first, breaking new ground. Everyone used their work and by default they ended up as "the author and maintainer".

The usual economist response to a saturated market seems to be "open up a new market", in this case by developing something so compelling that everyone has to have it, right now. The economics breaks in both our arguments when anyone can become market leader by taking the leading product and improving it slightly.

The trouble I have with discussing software development in any of these terms is that they don't really apply. Software development isn't driven by an evolutionary need to survive and reproduce, nor is it a product striving for market share. If I had to define it as anything, I'd see it as research, taking ideas from the great unknown, and wrestling them into a usable form for others to benefit from.

___________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

What I am trying to say, is I have not seen the large bulk of the window managers you said were there.

I would like to apologise for my previous post in this branch of the thread. I wasn't entirely lucid.

-- Jamie Payne