Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
news:FnWz8.4427$4%6.2697137369@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
>   The relevant question is "what is likely to make me money".  There's
> rarely "rigorous, *scientific* proof" available (except on late night
> TV), so you go with half baked evidence and statistical probabilities.

This is the reason that I won't demand scientific proof before adopting Ada.
There is some reasonable level of evidence and logic behind the choice and
absolute proof isn't necessary. I've seen it make money. OTOH, there are
"skeptics" who will want more evidence than is available. For those
unwilling to approach it with an open mind, no amount of evidence will
satisfy them. The best you can hope for is that the more reasonable and
rational companies will adopt the better technology and out-compete the
rest.


> company to perform the experiment.  If you have 100 programmers,
> it's worth investing 16 man years in the experiment.
> So the obvious question is "why haven't large companies with many
> programmers and a long time horizon, done the experiment yet?"

Many of them do not perceive themselves to be in the software business.
Those that do percieve of themselves as having a large interest in software
probably have not had the idea presented in a way that makes some business
sense. Besides, its *real* hard to get R&D $$$ out of a company for anything
that starts looking "fundamental" rather than geared at directly
developing/enhancing a product. (Much more the realm of academia or the
government.)

There was the Software Productivity Consortium (is it still out there?)
which was basically an attempt by several companies to get some research
work done that was a little more "fundamental" in nature. I don't remember a
whole lot coming out of that. It might be a clever idea to propose an
experiment on language productivity under a similar aegis and get some big
software developers (including Government?) to foot the bill.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com