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From: Roy Grimm <ragrimm@bigfoot.com>
Subject: Re: A question for my personal knowledge.
Date: 1999/05/11
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 <37372A84.641F2133@bigfoot.com> <7h8oe8$2js$1@cf01.edf.fr>
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Date: 1999-05-11T00:00:00+00:00
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Pascal Obry wrote:
> 
> Roy Grimm <ragrimm@bigfoot.com> a �crit dans le message :
> 37372A84.641F2133@bigfoot.com...
> 
> >
> > Third, training a programming team a new language is expensive.  Not
> > only do you have to provide the training, you have to pay the
> > programmers for the "dead time".  Many companies are not willing to take
> > the short term expense.
> >
> 
> It cost but I would not say that it is expensive. A computer language to
> learn is
> just syntax. The expensive part are the concepts like : Information hidding,
> encapsulation, data abstraction, polymorphisme, inheritance, .... But all
> this should be known by any good software engineer.

If they don't know those concepts, learning a new language in and of
itself certainly isn't going to help them.  They *should* know all that
as a result of the training they received before they took the job in
the first place.

> Now when you understand all these concepts, learning a new language is
> not that expensive but it still cost a bit.

When one has dozens or hundreds of
programmers/engineers/developers/whatever, the costs can add up
quickly.  Not only do you have to pay for the classes but you also have
the costs of learning the new development environment (even if your old
environment supports the new language, it has to have new ways of
handling some language features so it is never 100% identical).  Beyond
that, there's the unseen costs of the true learning curve of the
language.  Sure, you can pick up the syntax reasonably quickly but
you'll still take a few weeks or more of using that syntax to really
learn the language.  That is what's expensive.

> Pascal.

Roy

-- 
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