[MUD-Dev] Re: Network Connectivity

[Matt Chatterley]

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On 19-Jul-98 T. Alexander Popiel wrote:
> In message:  <771828681079.AAA2386 at smtp03.wxs.nl>
>              Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai at wxs.nl> writes:
>>
>>Have you encountered MU*'s that have bad network connectivity code? Or are
>>most, if not all, MU*'s rock-stable when it comes to their Network
>>Connectivity Code?
> 
> Umm, the two are not mutually exclusive.  For example, PennMUSH's
> networking code is a pile of spaghetti (and thus bad), but extremely
> stable.
> 
> My experience shows that most MU*s have extremely bad network code
> with a mean time between failure of about double that of the rest
> of the codebase.  (In other words, the networking code is just good
> enough to not be the most annoying cause of problems.)

Its my experience that the Mud world is *not* a happy place to work on your
Network layer. One of the philosophies which floats around Mud development
(unfair generalisation approaching!) is that which empowers the 'rapid fix'
over the 'careful development', with occasional rewrites to attempt to
straighten the 'spaghetti' out.

This in itself is a vaguely interesting issue to prod - I know that some folks
work to quite strict software design models, but, these are not always good or
very applicable to 'active works' whereby you have players (users), breaking
things at irregular intervals.

Back to the point, most Muds appear to have pretty stable networking layers, as
Alex says, mostly due (IMHO) to 'Trial by fire' - if you run a network game,
and the network layer is unstable, it'll be brought to your attention fairly
rapidly, and more than likely be placed on the urgent list. My experience on
the 'pointy end' of coding Muds has always been that I live in a constant state
of 'leak plugging' (with the occasional fuse explosion, and every now and then,
something big puffing smoke and dropping dead), if it doesn't leak
significantly, it doesn't get plugged.

Wow. Lot of words to say nothing, really. :)

- ---
        -Matt Chatterley
        http://user.itl.net/~neddy/
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.." -John Lennon (Imagine)

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