Jeff Darcy on Linus on specifications

Jeff Darcy over at “Canned Platypus” has written a nice piece on specifications and how Linus has got it wrong.

Any post that contains the phrase: "… who wouldn’t know good code if it got into a robot and literally bit them …" has to be worth a read, and as Jeff says, there’s a vast difference between a truly good specification and a bad one. Good specs are worth their weight in gold and can be a joy to work from.

I’m just about to resume a project for a client who produces very good specifications and the certainty of the task at hand makes it easier to quote for the work and considerably less stressful to produce the code. A good specification and unit tests written to make sure that the code adheres to that specification usually makes for a very relaxed project delivery and release phase.