[WikiEN-l] History of "stub" concept?

[Harry Smith]

As you describe in programming, a stub is a
development construct.  With concurrent development by
more than one programmer working together toward a
common goal, user "Zero0000" may create a stub, which
is expanded upon by user "Lance6Wins" and brought to
release quality by user "Viajero".   The process may
be iterative and each may add at various times.  

Seems to map very well to the concept of stubs in
Wikipedia.

Lance6Wins.

(names chosen totally at random by "the Forlorn Hope".
  hmmm...do we have a wikipedia page on "the forlorn
hope"? bit of british army history there.)

--- dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

> I have some guesses about the evolution of the
> "stub" concept on Wikipedia 
> and am seeking information from oldtimers as to
> whether my guesses are right.
> 
> I first encountered the word "stub" in a technical
> context. About the time I 
> started hearing about "top-down programming," which
> would have been, um, the 
> 1980s, I also started hearing about "stubs." 
> 
> When you are following the top-down methodology, you
> often encounter a 
> situation where subroutine A calls (and hence
> depends on) subroutine B. Yet 
> you want to write and test A before B is written.
> 
> For example, subroutine A might call subroutine B to
> find out whether a 
> device is ready before trying to output to it.
> Subroutine B is 
> absolutely vital to the finished program, but for
> purposes of writing and 
> testing A you just write a "stub" version of B which
> doesn't actually talk to 
> the device, but just says "the device is ready."
> 
> In this context, a stub is a piece of temporary
> scaffolding that is put in 
> place solely to allow work to proceed, which is not
> a part of the finished 
> product, and which must be removed and replaced with
> the real subroutine 
> before the product is released.
> 
> I fantasize that it is a couple of years ago, and
> that there are enormous 
> numbers of articles that anyone can see need to be
> written, and that I have 
> decided to write about (say) echinoderms. As I start
> to write, say, an 
> article on "Echinodermata," I realize that I will
> eventually want to write 
> and link to Asteroidea, Echinoidea, etc. So I create
> stubs for these, with 
> two things in mind. First, I have at least some
> intention of going back and 
> actually writing those articles. Second, I know that
> there are other people 
> who know as much or more than I do about
> echinoderms, and may prefer to write 
> the article on Asteroidea myself rather than waiting
> for me to do it.
> 
> So the stub serves _three_ purposes: a reminder to
> everyone that there's an 
> article that needs to be written, an implied
> statement that I sort of plan to 
> write that article when I get around to it, and an
> implied invitation to 
> others that if they feel like working on this
> _before_ I can get around to 
> it, they should just jump in.
> 
> I notice that "The Perfect Stub" clearly presents
> stubs in the context of an 
> intention by the creator of the stub to continue
> personally working on 
> expanding the stub. It seems to suggest that the
> expected timeframe for 
> this expansion is a few weeks; that is, it should
> reasonably expected that 
> the stub contributor will keep nibbling away, adding
> small accretions to the 
> stub, and that if a few weeks have elapsed and
> nobody else has taken on the 
> job of writing the article the stub creator should
> assume that nobody else is 
> going to, and they should write the article
> themselves.
> 
> Part and parcel of this viewpoint is that a stub is
> not useful in itself. As 
> with the programmer's stub, it is just a temporary
> expedient to allow work to 
> continue, and must be replaced with a real article
> before "release."
> 
> Does this imaginary view of mine correspond to an
> historically correct 
> description of the mindset with which stubs were
> viewed a couple of years 
> ago?
>  
> 
> 
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> 



		
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