[ale] Wanted: trivial minicom-type function

[Christopher Fowler]

On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 13:08 -0500, Mills, John M. wrote:
> Once it works we can improve the code as needed.

If I had a dollar for every time we said that in development I'll be
rich.  The problem with that statement is that the reality is that
rewrites never happen.  Forward development can't wait on rewrites.  If
the user don't see a benefit then it never really gets scheduled in. 

After 2 years I've finally allowed one of my J2EE developers to do some
rework for the benefit of the future.  We've always said lets just hack
it out and we can clean it up later.  This is the life in a bazaar.