The system mentioned above represent any software system.

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Request for Question Clarification by vinods-ga on 16 Oct 2002 23:03 PDT

hi, 

can you tell us a bit more ?

warm regards
vinods-ga

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Clarification of Question by 888-ga on 17 Oct 2002 09:25 PDT

Let take Windows an example,which one would be the weakeast ?

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Clarification of Question by 888-ga on 21 Oct 2002 00:59 PDT

Generally the second system was trying to improve the first
system,however like windows OS,it become bigger and bigger and add
several function which are not really required by end users,so is
second and third system really neccessary or compare to the first
WINDOWS OS,does Windows XP really meet user's need ?

Alright, I'm going to take a stab at this one.

First off, I'm going to limit "weakness" to mean the number of bugs,
since it's one of very few quantifiable measurements.

Shortly before release, Windows 2000 had over 50,000 known bugs (see
http://www.oops-web.com/FoleyOn2000.html)
According to LowEndMac ( http://www.lowendmac.com/tf/010401.html ),
Windows NT 4 had around 10,000 bugs, and winXP has over 100,000.

According to this site (
http://www.gup.uni-linz.ac.at/~dk/thesis/html/problema6.html ),
Windows 98 fixed 5000 known bugs in windows 95, and provides a lot of
information about bugs and failure in software in general (not
Windows-specific).

So, we have Windows NT 4 with >10000, win2k with >50000 and winXP with
>100000.  I pick these because they represent a continuum (win2k is
NT5 and XP is built on 2k) of three versions as your question
indicated.  The number of bugs is a function of the length of the
code, not so much a function of the version.  While Win2k undoubtedly
fixed many bugs in NT4, it introduced many new (buggy) features which
more than compensated for the cleanup of NT4.  The same occurred with
WinXP which had twice as many bugs as its predecessor rather than 5x
as many (NT4 to NT5/2k) owing to the fact that XP is a much smaller
change than win2k was.

If this is not the answer you were looking for, please request a
clarification and let me know what you are dissatisfied with so I can
correct it.  Thanks.

-Haversian

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Clarification of Answer by haversian-ga on 21 Oct 2002 04:58 PDT

If we continue the trend backward, we come upon DOS.  While DOS hardly
deserves the adulation of the public, it was rock-stable in my
experience, and I did some horrible things to it.  I had WordPerfect
render a page that took literally 45 minutes, for example.  We thought
it had locked up but when we came back an hour later, there was a page
(half-printed because the printer didn't have enough memory) in the
output tray.

(not posted as part of the answer because it's anecdotal and not
related to Windows per se)

It depends on who is developing the software and the scale of the
project. A small, do-it-yourself job should get better and better.

A large project using sub-contractors will probably get weaker and
weaker as the guys find new ways to spin out the work for ever and
ever.

Now I can't let that go. I'm an IT subcontractor, and I have NEVER
deliberately slowed down a project nor do I know anybody who has....if
we did we wouldn't get much work.

The important thing on projects is up front planning and managing the
change process. At the design stage the more you can define the system
the better, so the 3rd design would generally be better, except in the
cass where you've over designed and gone beyond the bounds of the
project scope.

Willie

I don't have my copy of the Mythical Man Month (the software
engineering bible) on me, but I remember that they devoted a good
amount of time to this subject. Problem was, as I remember that book
gave somewhat conflicting messages. In one part, the author mentions
that the second system is the most dangerous one designed, because of
all the feature creap that designers throw in to "improve" the
product. But in another portion, the author mentions the initial
assumptions and programming will always be flawed, and that you should
"plan to throw one away, because you will anyway."  So it seems that
third system will be the best one, but it's a judgement call as to
whether the first or second is the weakest.

Hi, Willie

Sorry to have caused you offence.

However, living in Scotland, you have probably never heard of the
Channel Tunnel project (Not software admittedly). Engineers who worked
on the project were appalled at how many sub-contractors were able to
spin things out.

It happens!