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Why (Regular) Releases Matter (modernperlbooks.com)
15 points by chromatic on May 30, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments


Regular Releases are important because they force you develop stable intermediate forms; which hearkens back to Simon's Parable of the Two Watchmakers:

There once were two watchmakers, named Hora and Tempus, who made very fine watches. The phones in their workshops rang frequently and new customers were constantly calling them. However, Hora prospered while Tempus became poorer and poorer. In the end, Tempus lost his shop. What was the reason behind this?

The watches consisted of about 1000 parts each. The watches that Tempus made were designed such that, when he had to put down a partly assembled watch, it immediately fell into pieces and had to be reassembled from the basic elements. Hora had designed his watches so that he could put together sub-assemblies of about ten components each, and each sub-assembly could be put down without falling apart. Ten of these subassemblies could be put together to make a larger sub-assembly, and ten of the larger sub-assemblies constituted the whole watch


It took me 40 seconds of staring at the title and wondering "Who is regular and why is he releasing matter?" before I could properly parse that title.


>"Who is regular and why is he releasing matter?"

Trolling or not, this is the funniest question I've read all week. This article hearkens back to a lesson lifted from The Cathedral and the Bazaar [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...], which was 'Release Early, Release Often'


> "Who is regular and why is he releasing matter?"

No, "Why" is the Ruby guy. Regular Why (not any newer or improved Why) is releasing matter. And at an alarming rate! :)


That was my first parse as well. Did anybody get it right on the first try?


I didn't have any issues. It actually took me reading the title several times to see what you guys were talking about.




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