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

[Fred Bauder]

The expressed problem with stubs was that they show up as an article which
has already been written, yet when you click on the blue link like to
[[Tucson, Arizona]] all you get is "Tucson, Arizona is a large city in
southern [[Arizona]]. It was felt to be misleading and a potential
disappointment to users. It was felt that an empty link, which showed up in
red rather than blue was better.

I always thought that was all nonsense.

Fred

> From: <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 15:04:19 -0500
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] History of "stub" concept?
> 
> 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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