From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,d89b08801f2aacae X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-05-03 16:42:03 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!207.115.63.138!newscon04.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr16.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3CD32114.D45C3978@flash.net> From: Gary Scott Reply-To: scottg@flash.net Organization: Home X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en]C-DIAL (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is strong typing worth the cost? References: <4519e058.0204290722.2189008@posting.google.com> <3CCE8523.6F2E721C@earthlink.net> <3CCEB246.9090009@worldnet.att.net> <3CCFD76A.A60BB9A8@flash.net> <3CD0A3B8.7B7C8622@san.rr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.188.43.137 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr16.news.prodigy.com 1020469282 ST000 208.188.43.137 (Fri, 03 May 2002 19:41:22 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 19:41:22 EDT X-UserInfo1: TSU[@I_AOXZUPAX_Z[BDMUDATRXVPBQLGPQRZUEK@YUDUWYAKVUOPCW[ML\JXUCKVFDYZKBMSFX^OMSAFNTINTDDMVW[X\THOPXZRVOCJTUTPC\_JSBVX\KAOTBAJBVMZTYAKMNLDI_MFDSSOLXINH__FS^\WQGHGI^C@E[A_CF\AQLDQ\BTMPLDFNVUQ_VM Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 23:41:22 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:23520 Date: 2002-05-03T23:41:22+00:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote: > > I have absolutely no argument with the notion that different problem domains > are going to have different cost drivers. I believe I said somewhere else > that if you didn't care about bugs and you didn't care about maintenance, > then design work was just an up-front cost with little to no back end > payoff. (With the caveat that if you do *no* design, your project might just > fail entirely.) Nearly everything I develop is likely to be categorized as Q&D code by the those in this NG. However, I think I produce fairly high quality Q&D code. I've done this by being highly "modular" and building up a huge library of utility code that suits my typical problem domain (avionics modeling and data analysis). I can put together a Q&D application (with GUI) very rapidly and still have 99% cross-platform portable code, with all platform portability modifications located in one or a few modules (i.e. packages). So, I don't necessarily agree with some that Q&D always means poor quality. I'm not a programmer and I've been asked to provide source to some of my tools on a number of occasions to programming teams and have received occasional complements on the structure, comment quality, etc. I do not perform a formal design process. In fact for the last major tool, the team making the request was not versed in software and had little idea what it needed to do so I had to make it up as I went by dragging it out of them and an avionic equipment vendor (verbal inputs and emails)...it seems to have turned out well and cost 1/10 of what the subcontractor originally estimated. This wasn't intended to be a bragging session as I don't claim to be a programmer (electronics engineer), just modifying the definition of "Q&D" slightly. > > One might reasonably ask: "Couldn't the animation software be well built and > still do its job?" Is it of necessity spaghetti code? Is it somehow or other > faster to get the job done to just start plodding along laying down code > until the animation looks right? I suspect that if the hypothetical > animation developers did *some* analysis and design up front and *did* build > solid, reliable code that it would possibly not take any longer to get to > market and might yield larger chunks of things that could be reused & save > time/money on the next animation. (I wouldn't go to the extremes of analysis > & design done for safety critical software, but surely the animator still > needs to do some amount of "debugging" to get the thing to work at all and > surely that means if there were better forthought and stronger checks, lots > of those problems might be minimized.) > > I see the point that throw-away code need not be well built. But it is not > demonstrated that this is somehow faster or better or cheaper than > well-built code to do the same thing. > > MDC > -- > Marin David Condic > Senior Software Engineer > Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com > Enabling the digital revolution > e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com > > "Darren New" wrote in message > news:3CD0A3B8.7B7C8622@san.rr.com... > > > > On the other hand, if you're writing run-once software, it's pretty easy > > to see that the cleanliness of the design is virtually irrelevant. > > Consider software to animate a crowd of CGI characters in a movie. As > > long as the end result looks good, it doesn't matter what the code looks > > like. It could be the most god-awful mess of spaghetti code and misnamed > > uncommented variables you can imagine, and it just doesn't matter. As > > soon as the film is out, you're never going to run the program again. > > Certainly if the requirement is "make the fur on the monster look > > realistic", the first place to start is not the type system. > > -- Gary Scott mailto:scottg@flash.net mailto:webmaster@fortranlib.com http://www.fortranlib.com Support the GNU Fortran G95 Project: http://g95.sourceforge.net