"Andreas Kostyrka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > Yes, the problem is, that these guys are anyway forced to have > Python/Erlang developers on board, because of external opensource > components they need to maintain.
And that one fact completely changes the economics and thereby renders the lead position non viable. > The problem here is that C++ is a strong mismatch for > the job at hand. > > With strong mismatch I mean hear at least a magnitude > more costs. During initial development and during maintenance. I would be amazed at anuy project where a language made an order of magnitude difference. The difference in moving from assembler to VB is only about double (Thats the only case wehere I have hard experrience). The problem is as Fred Brooks stated in his essay "No Silver Bullet" that the real costs in development are the intengibles - the time spent thinking about theproblem/solution and dealing with people. They far outweigh the time actually writing code. The average project delivers around 20-100 lines of working code per day. But you can type that in mechanically in half an hour or less. The rest of the day is doing the stuff that really costs. > Combined with the fact that the group cannot avoid > learning Python andErlang, because external > OSS projects used by them that they need to > maintain and customize are written in Python & Erlang. But this is the critical bt that was missing from the original problem statement. If they use these languages anyway then it makes sense to expand their code base. If these were niche languages on a dying legacy then it makes no sense to increase their use. > But basically, your argument misses one important aspect: > > While most languages are equivalent in a theoretical sense ... > Some languages can and do provide at least a magnitude > of improvement compared to other languages. I do dispute that and would be interested in any objective figures that you have. All of the figures I've seen suggest the total project cost impact of lanmguage choice is rarely more than 10-20% of TCO > Now add to the fact that software developement does > not scale linearly, and the developer efficiency point > becomes even more important. But as projects get bigger language choice becomes vanishingly small in the equation. Total developer cost in any large projerct rarely exceeds 10% and of that the language might make up 20% at most, so total impact of language reduces to around 1-2% of TCO. > If, by using some higher language a problem becomes > so "easy" to solve that a single developer can deal with > it, instead of say a 4 man team,than this is a critical aspect. In that case I agree and at that small scale of project then language choice is still a valid argument. And for the kind of maintenance type feature fix we were discussing the project is quite small. (Different if the language choice requires a rewrite of the existing app of course!) > It's kind like having a policy that all invoices must be in > USD and are payed only in USD. Now two companies bid. I'm sorry, I think I missed the connection in the analogy. > (Philosophically, that's not even that bad a comparison, as learning > Python is a rather minor thing for a reasonable good developer. I totally agree, but unfortunately in the corporate world where I work there are relatively few "good developers" - typically one or two per team(around 6-10 people). Indeed only about half of our developers are formally trained to University Engineering/Computer Science type level. Many have craft certificvates from a trade school and (even if just psychologicalluy) learning a new language is a huge hurdle for them. They will insist on going ona weeks training course etc. So yes, most "good" developers can pick up Python in a couple of days from the web site, many corporate programmers balk at such an idea. (This is one area where a hobbyist turned pro is better than a journeyman programmer, the hobbyist is much more likely to learn new skills out of interests sake!) > So no, I do not concur with you. I understand why it has > some value, but you wouldn't argue that your company > should use passenger cars to transport 100 tons of goods, > just because all employee have a license to drive such, > while truck drivers are slightly harder to come by, would > you? No, but I might suggest hiring some trailers or using an external haulage company. It all depends on wheher its a one-off job or a new line of work that we need to build skills. So in this analogy we may need to buy a truck and start training a number of staff to drive it, but thats expensive so before doing so I'd look to see if it was one-off and at the other options. If in your example they need Python/Erlang anyway that completely changes the economics. Alan G. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
