Nothing to do - for a creative developer [LWN.net]

Nothing to do - for a creative developer

Posted May 20, 2016 8:09 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: Nothing to do - for a creative developer by hkario
Parent article: Old projects and the free-software community

Updating a build system is not even proper engineering, it's janitorial work.

Nothing to do - for a creative developer

Posted May 20, 2016 17:42 UTC (Fri) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

In the same sense as fixing bug is not proper engineering but janitorial work.

Lots of satisfying work to do - for creative janitors

Posted May 21, 2016 7:24 UTC (Sat) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

It never pays to despise "janitorial work".

"make veryclean" is the first target I write in my makefiles, and it often needs enhancements.

Places where nobody bothers to do the cleaning and tidying become increasingly hostile and energy-sapping places to work. This applies in physical environments, and it applies in software projects.

And, setting up a good build system which is easy to work with, easy on beginners, and easy to keep tidy is worthy engineering in its own right.