The Lessons of Software Monoculture 585
digitalsurgeon writes "SD Times has a story by Jeff Duntemann where he explains the 'Software monoculture' and why Microsoft's products are known for security problems. Like many Microsoft enthusiasts he claims that it's the popularity and market share of Microsoft's products that are responsible, and he notes that the problem is largely with C/C++ and mostly because of the buffer overflow problems."
Does this mean C++ is dying? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tool (Score:5, Funny)
That's kind of like ending up with a "null pointer" eh?
Re:Popularity not the problem. (Score:1, Funny)
C++ to blame (Score:5, Funny)
Makes Sense (Score:3, Funny)
You don't make something opensource if you wanna make money. That is a straight up fact. Have there been successes? Oh yeah, there have been plenty. If you wanna make the big bucks you keep it in house so no one can profit off your work. However, your company can't make money if you are continuously working on a product and not selling it. So does Microsoft release buggy code? Yeah.
It is a matter of money. Bill Gates didn't start Microsoft because he wanted to touch lives, he made the company to make money. That is the general reason anyone starts a company. Dollar signs.
So you have deadlines. A good example is the rush developement and release of EQ2. Hell you can even compare it to any EQ expansion. Full of bugs, exploits, instability, etc. Why? Money. You don't make money programming to make it perfect. You make money by having a product good enough that people will use it. Why else has EQ maintained a stable subscription base over five years. Granted there have been jumps in either direction but it has been stable enough to open more servers.
Expansions like Gates of Discord, Luclin, Omens of War and Planes of Power all had more than their fair share of bugs. Money is the underlying issue. The expansions were good enough to release but not solid.
The same can be said for Microsoft. Windows is good enough but can always be fixed through patches. If they are gonna keep it in house forever, then they will never make money.
Re:Authors Impartiality (Score:0, Funny)
Re:Blaming the language... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Blaming the language... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Blaming the language... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:managed code (Score:3, Funny)
Gawd. I thought the discussion was about a Command Line Interpreter.
I'm so old...
Re:Has NOTHING to do with language (Score:2, Funny)
Re:C# (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Has NOTHING to do with language (Score:1, Funny)