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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,19e983c5955f75f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-06 07:15:22 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!logbridge.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!feed.textport.net!newsranger.com!www.newsranger.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Ted Dennison Sender: usenet@www.newsranger.com References: <9af9ao$6ee$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <9aiq8h$ik8$1@nh.pace.co.uk> Subject: Re: Learning Ada (newbie) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 14:13:59 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.208.22.130 X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsranger.com X-Trace: www.newsranger.com 986566439 209.208.22.130 (Fri, 06 Apr 2001 10:13:59 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2001 10:13:59 EDT Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6559 Date: 2001-04-06T14:13:59+00:00 List-Id: In article <9aiq8h$ik8$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says... > >You might want to note that catching errors early is not just a matter of >coolness or intellectual tidiness. It translates very directly into $$$$$ >saved! (I'm currently doing a *lot* of C programming and getting quite That's very true, but I wouldn't even stop there. To a corporation time is indeed money. But to you and me as developers it can be much more than that. We have personal lives to live, and interpersonal relationships to nurture. Many times integration has to happen at a customer site, far from one's family. If its a relatively quick and smooth integration, that's no big deal. It can even bit kind of fun. But once it starts to get to be more than a couple of weeks or so, it can start to put a big strain on people's personal relationships. Thus pushing error-finding off into later phases of a project can not only have monetary consequences, but social consequences as well. I had one very close friend whose marrige broke up as a direct result of the exteneded separation imposed by integration of buggy C code. (One example of a bug they found: An array out-of-bounds indexing error which would have at worst immediately raised an exception in Ada, instead caused an odd intermittent symptom 2 networked computers away. It took them 3 *weeks* to track it down.) I had another close friend working on the same project with *5* young kids at home, whose marriage very nearly broke up, again directly related to the extended separation. Of course for you mercenary types, this also cost the corporation even more money. For one thing, all that site time living in hotels, etc., isn't cheap. For another, neither one of these valuable developers were very productive at work for the next 4 months while they desperately tried to get their personal lives back in order. But I'd argue that there were (and are) more important issues at stake than meer money. --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com