J
James Kanze
Do you deem »TeX« to be developed by just a single person?
Do you deem »TeX« to be »good«?
No, and fundamentally, no.
It's certainly not the work of a single programmer, working in
isolation---Knuth is known for his communcations skills, and was
a thesis advisor for a number of people when TeX was being
written. (I read somewhere that a large percentage of TeX was
actually coded by one of the people who had him as a thesis
advisor. Having actually read several chapters of the source
code, however, I have my doubts---the style is definitely
Knuth's. On the other hand, Addison-Wesley published it as a
book, and technical books published by Addison-Wesley are NOT
produced in isolation---they're reviewed. And such reviews do
result in significant changes, and a lot of errors being
caught.)
As for the quality, it is significantly better than a lot of
commercial programs around. But it still contained more errors
than would have been acceptable in most places where I've
worked.
Recently, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger went public claiming that
too much »groupthink« might hinder creativity and that
programmers sometimes might need some solitude.
Even without reading the article... Any creative thinker
certainly needs moments of solitude---a lot of my best ideas
come either in the shower, or when I'm driving, with no one else
in the car. But such creative ideas, and their implementation,
do need to be reviewed.
I think it also depends on the person. I'm most creative in an
isolated context, but I've worked with people who couldn't
create unless they were doing so out loud, to a listening
audience. So that after a fairly short brainstorming session,
I'd want to break it off, so that I could think creatively about
the points raised, but my collegue wanted it to continue, for
the same reason.