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Perfect Software?
Ralf Maximus:
I reject the notion that "perfection is unattainable". Yes, many open-source developers do fear creating an actual Version 1.0. That may be because they don't live in a commercial world that obeys the Pareto Principle, aka the 80-20 rule: The first 80% of anything takes 20% of the time; consequently and conversely, the last 20% takes 80% of the time.
--- End quote ---
Bingo. Ditto. We Have A Winner. Cue fireworks.
That's a wonderfully concise distillation of something I've tried to articulate before, and failed. Thank you.
BTW, I don't remember seeing you round these parts before, Yahya. Welcome aboard!
dlagesse1992:
I nominate Resource Hacker. It does what it needs to, is small, powerful, and not bloated. The author has stopped development as it is good where it is. Also very useful for messing with things...
Yahya:
Thanks for the kind words, Ralf! :)
On rereading, I see that Nosh had implicitly given a similar definition of "perfection" to mine: "It does what I need". Though with today's relative cheapness of computing power and storage, we can certainly go beyond needs and cater to many (strictly unnecessary) wants as well. Besides, perfection in a tool cannot be constrained by real-world scarcity, only by the purposes of its users.
For many years, I ranked Blackbeard (a shareware DOS text editor with block copy capability, multiple concurrent edit windows, user-definable key bindings and an excellent macro facility) as a perfect app. Then my needs AND wants changed: I needed less eyestrain (from DOS colour combinations) and wanted to routinely use various emphases, such as bold, italic and underline, for a more natural reflection of a speaking voice. The nature of my wants ruled out ANY text editor; thus began my long search for a perfect word processor ... These days, I'm more interested in "idea processor" tools than presentation aids. So as long as we live, the search for perfection will continue; not because it is unattainable, but because it is a moving target.
Curt:
Task Killer is another "perfect" program.
Not updated since 2005, though, so not Vistable.
nosh:
I love Task Killer - it's really helpful.
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