Hi Jarrod, I would like to share some IBM insights with you relevant to some of your comments ...
> So anyone that chants the "FREE mantra" keep using Tomcat and Vi and > all the other "free" crap because in the end it will cost you > HUNDREDS TIMES more than buying a proper tool and saving money over > the long haul. Then again if you are lowballing jobs, and working on > crappy little projects all this is moot, why are you using Orion > then, why not use JBoss or any of the other FREE EJB containers. I > mean you "COULD" move a mountian with a plastic spoon, hell they are > FREE at every fast food joint, but would'nt a sane and reasonable > person spend the money on real earth moving equipment and get the job > done quickly so they could move on to the next paying job moving the > next mountain. Some time ago I was involved in IBM's "San Fransisco" project, about which you may know. This enterrpise level tool was very large and free for development I understand. Various tool makers came up with ways of enhancing the development process including the integration of the Rational suite of products. OK. That was the story from the West. It turned out that the most productive developers of San Fransisco applications were NOT the people who used fancy, expensive Yankee IDE's or tools, but the teams of hundreds of Indian programmers around Mumbai. The Indian software houses could not afford to pay guys like you, and provide guys like you with tools to make you productive, and save you time, so you could be with your family. No. They could afford to hire hundreds of developers and provide them with cheap development tools, like 'vi' ;), and let them loose on a task. So from this International competitive perspective your comments are way off the mark, the kind of productivity you speak about, (great design guys, large scale projects, etc) are irrelevant in the global domain. It doesn't matter in the end how productive you are, or what tools you use, you will NEVER be able to compete with the developer farms of countries like India, and just wait till China comes on line! I guess the same thing that happened to the Western clothing industry WILL happen to the Western software development business - it will be moved off-shore into countries that have large volumes of super-cheap educated labour, using free development tools. Unfortunately your comments sound like those of an ageing Western prima donna whose tunes are increasingly less popular. Sure tools like Idea were built for prima donna Western software developers ... but with developer farms coming on line ... prima donnas and the tools that support them are becoming less and less of a good business proposition. Perhaps you could start a "crappy little project" that could make you a lot of money, so you could retire early? ;) Regards goffredo
