Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

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

"Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3CF113D6.40601@attbi.com...
>
>
> I've worked on a couple of these studies, and there is really vicious
> infighting over the definition of productivity.  If you use a bean
> counter definition of productivity, like customer calls handled or memos
> written productivity will usually go down.  If you use a market
> definition of productivity such as corporate ROI, productivity goes way
> up with PCs.
>
Its been a while since I read the study, but I believe that it was using
some metric based on ROI. (Don't the bean counters use ROI? :-) It was at a
fairly gross level across a number of companies so one could still argue
that the study was flawed in terms of the metric being impacted by more than
just the introduction of computers. (It was some version of "Here's a
company that invested a bunch of money in computers. Heres a company that
did not. Both are similarly profitable...." I oversimplify, but I think you
get the point.)

You're right though about arguing over the metrics. Its really hard to come
up with a yardstick that can't be criticised heavily and/or manipulated &
abused. Money comes darned close though. Its pretty easy to count and you
can't argue that it doesn't matter in commercial enterprises. :-)


>
> Now I am not arguing that Multics would be better than today's Unix
> workstations.  Workstations have come a long way since then.  Just that
> you have to be very careful when doing such a study not to define the
> study in a way that determines the results in advance.
>
An age-old management technique - first you define the answer you want, then
you go casting about to get the information that supports that answer. I
suppose that's why I'm not vice president of engineering at some big firm -
I'm not politically inclined enough to forgo science and reason in decision
making. :-)

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