Re: A question for my personal knowledge.

[Roy Grimm <ragrimm@bigfoot.com>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> ...And let the language wars begin!...:-)

Oh dear, what have I done?!?

> pragma Flame (On) ;
> 
> I hear this argument all the time - "Nobody wants to switch to language
> X because training/education/infrastructure/whatever is too expensive."
> This ends up absurd on the face of it. Stick "Java" in where "X" appears
> above. Apparently people were willing to eat the costs - large or small
> or whatever they really are - in order to get the perceived benefits of
> the new language. This *must* be true or we'd all still be programming
> in assembler.
> 
> I think it ends up coming down to this: "I find language X interesting.
> Hence, I will acquire the resources and start developing in X." versus
> "I hate language Y and someone is encouraging/forcing me to adopt it.
> Hence, language Y will cost too much, take too long, introduce too many
> risks, make it impossible for me to get qualified staff, blah, blah,
> blah."
> 
> I hope this isn't looked at as any sort of attack. I realize lots of
> people of good will and intelligence understand that there are costs
> associated with switching over to a new language. I just get frustrated
> with the notion that this is somehow an insurmountable barrier. It is
> obviously *not* an insurmountable barrier the instant Programmer Pete or
> Manager Mel decide they like a language and want to use it. It is done
> *all*the*time* and apparently doesn't bankrupt a project or company or
> there would *never* be any progress beyond machine code.
> 
> pragma Flame (Off) ;
> 
> Whew! Feels good to get that out of my system!

All I intended to say is that there are real costs associated with
switching languages.  I never meant to imply that they were
insurmountable.  Nevertheless, some managers (what percentage, I have no
idea and will not presume to guess) use theses costs as a justification
not to switch to a different language.  That was the subject of the
original question which was, to paraphrase, "Why don't people switch to
Ada?"

Now, I will also say that there are plenty of managers out there who
will also plan for those costs (successfully or not...) and make the
change to another language for whatever reason.  Again, I have no idea
how many, so I won't guess.

I'm actually in favor of using the right language for the job.  Some
problems lend themselves to using specific languages (or classes
thereof) and it's easier in the long run to teach the project crew the
new language than to deal with using an inappropriate language.  In my
job, I do quite a bit of switching back and forth between languages and
environments depending on what project I'm working on.  In the last
three years, I've had to learn four different development environments
and three new languages (ok, so one was a dialog of a language I already
knew, but that has it's own peculiarities.)

People switch languages all the time.  Some people use the cost of doing
so as a justification not to.

> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic
> Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
> United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
> M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
> ***To reply, remove "bogon" from the domain name.***
> 
> Visit my web page at: http://www.flipag.net/mcondic


Roy
-- 
What if Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed... Oh,
wait.  He does!