Re: Communications of ACM: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33!

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:01:19 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> On 28.12.10 11:13, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> In my view tools is cancer of software developing.
> 
> Sounds overly general.  Some programs are written over
> and over again.  Typically, a fraction of programmers
> repeats the mistakes of earlier programs of the same kind.
> Forms, for example, have been in use for decades.  Yet,
> forms continue to show the same flaws and mistakes.
> 
> If there is a theory of forms and a corresponding tool to direct
> the programmer, then a forms tool is not different from a
> programming language: a programming language, too, directs
> the programmer to arrange program code and data in proper
> order.  The difference between a "tool" and a language is,
> then, that the tool (and generator) may reflect knowledge of
> these repeatedly written programs, or patterns.

This describes a situation when programmers failed to use the language for
providing higher level abstractions and reusing solutions in the language
terms. Instead of that they design another half-baked language called tool.
Just in order to be realistic. What is simpler:

1. To design a new language or to properly encapsulate domain specific
abstraction?

2. To hire a competent language/compiler developer or a competent software
developer?

3. To integrate generated code or designed code?

Tools distract language community efforts from improving the language.
Tools eat resources which otherwise would be invested in software quality.
Tool chains require maintenance is order of magnitude compared to
maintenance of a compiler. Programmers are busy writing tools to maintain
tools maintaining other tools. Tools give the manager a false impression
that the project is under control, and that instead of hiring competent
developers he could buy their knowledge in the form of a new fancy tool.
Tools make certification a joke. Tools make the code base virtually
non-existent. Tools generate worst possible code which need to be glued
with other code in a proportion that the amount of glue become bigger than
the functional parts. Tools prevent software reuse and serve insulation of
developers' communities.

Tools today is a combination the worst disasters software engineering
suffered since the invention of C, x86, Windows and Unix.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de