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=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e29c511c2b08561c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) Subject: Re: Front Ends (was: Re: Is the "Ada mandate" being reconsidered?) Date: 1996/07/19 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 169665116 sender: news@organon.com (news) references: <4mq7mg$8hs@jake.probe.net> organization: Organon Motives, Inc. newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <4sm455$338@gde.GDEsystems.COM> Tom Robinson 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