Re: Front Ends (was: Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?)

[jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <4sm455$338@gde.GDEsystems.COM> Tom Robinson <robinson@gdesystems.com> writes:

> Why?  There are two ways to *get a fix* in this situation.  Either
> the vendor fixes the problem directly or they get the third party to
> fix the problem.  In case one we (the customers) are relying on the
> vendor developing expertise in software that they did not want to
> spend the money and time to develop.  It is most likely that the
> *expertise* required to provide problem solutions will be developed
> as the problems (my problems) are solved.  In case two we are
> relying on the selling vendor having a good enough relationship with
> the third party vendor to insure that the problems (my problems) are
> solved and also to coordinate to provide me with emergency updates.

I think that this particular attitude/concern is another example of
the anamolous aspect of software as "product" and why it has such a
hard time moving beyond a kind of "blacksmith" level.  Note that most
vendors seem to express the mirror image of this from "their side of
the desk".

The computer you are using to compose your messages on has parts from
many different vendors.  If it's a PC, it's very likely that the
vendor with the name on the front didn't make any of the parts and
"just integrated" them to produce the complete system.  Same thing
with automobiles, airplanes, TVs, stereos, coffee makers, weed
wackers, etc., etc., etc.  I would bet you don't find yourself
worrying about the fact that Honda (or whoever) doesn't make the chips
in its ECUs when you think about purchasing a car.  You might wonder
which _ones_ they use, but not that they didn't make them.

Now, in software, this sort of thing is rare to non-existent.  The
obvious exceptions revolving around "commercial libraries" like
RogueWave.  How would you view the use of these in a "third party"
product you were looking at?

Still, most SW is all "custom" (including COTS - you don't believe MS
buys an outliner from Supreme SW, a GUI from WindozeRUS, and adds the
other bits to create Word, right?) and does not have the "problem" you
are worried about.  But this typically means that the true value added
for any given piece of software is only a small percentage of the
whole effort.  This is an old story.  It's a variant of the reuse
story, not the same though, as the single vendor may be reusing a lot
of its own stuff - not likely, but it does happen. And like the reuse
story there are certainly many issues to it.  One of which seems to be
a kind of chicken-or-egg thing with customers (as evidenced by your
concerns).

The AdaMagic frontend and ObjecAda example is quite interesting and
very appealing to me.  For one thing it is rather unique even for the
rare cases of software composed of "integrated parts".  This is
because most "integrated parts" examples are either very low level (a
RogueWave class or two was used) or the parts are really standalone
systems that were whacked together to form a larger system (the land
of the custom system integrator...)  But here, the two obvious bits
the frontend and the Windoze/Intel backend (and there are clearly many
others), are quite highlevel but are not "standalones".  Further, they
are produced by two completely different vendors.  And even more
interesting is that the result is one of the very few SW products
whose construction mirrors (at least to some extent) what happens in
non-SW products.  Overall quality and capability in such instances
will typically be much better than what any single vendor could do.

It's not clear how to make more of this sort of thing happen, but it
seems quite clear (IMO) that it is the sort of thing that needs to
happen if we are going to go beyond, "Hey, Emil!  When ya get a
chance, hows 'bout workin' me up some new spurs?"

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
1 Williston Road, Suite 4
Belmont, MA 02178

617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com