Brad Fuller wrote:
Keith,
That's a great story. We should put that on the website!
You really should:
- STIC - Squeak
websites.
Though you should really ask if that application is still running.
Claus
On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Keith Hodges keith_hodges@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
In his words, he is "extremely prejudiced" against Smalltalk, even though he used it during a big project "back in the day." He calls it a "quirky, unusual" language that you can do "great and powerful things" with. The "Father of real object oriented programming," but only a "niche" language that small groups of bright people use to go of and accomplish amazing things with. But, because the business is full of "ordinary" people, he thinks you would never be able to find anyone to work with the code you have written as a business when your Smalltalk developers leave for other pursuits.
I once wrote a simulator for telecoms equipment. The original demo took 2 weeks to produce in order to convince my boss.
After 3 months work, the simulator was simulating a single piece of equipment 2 months before real equipment was available. This gave the whole team a considerable head start. After a further 6-8 months the simulation was doing 1000 pieces of equipment simultaneously, of 3 different varieties, while at the same time simulating up to 20 users prodding the management system. There were 1500 unit tests ensuring that everything was according to spec. The simulation turned out to be key to proof of concept for our clients signing on the dotted line.
On the other side of the office, a contractor attempted to write a similar simulator for another piece of equipment, in perl. After a year that was scapped and a team of 4 started in Java. That was also scapped and a top guru tried again in java, his efforts ran on 10 pcs! Finally, last I heard another extremely expensive contractor was starting again in C++.
I estimate (being generous) that they must have spent over a half a million pounds on that failed project, and that doesnt include some rather expensive bought in libraries (for which source code was not visible). Little ol- me knocked up my Smalltalk equivalent for perhaps 5-10% of the cost. (we did buy an ST/X licence for £2000).
When I went on holiday, the only non-programmer in my team, the guy doing automated testing was quite able to fix bugs, run unit tests and keep things going. When I left the company the entire system was handed over to a perl programmer, and last I heard it was still being used by 9 people daily. I must ring up and ask if it reached its 10th bithday.
So... if your boss is happy to spend 10x as much to get a poorer result... there is not much else can be said.
cheers
Keith