Meyer, OO and concurrency

todd todd@REDACTED
Thu Jul 14 23:00:14 CEST 2005


Ulf Wiger wrote:

> Den 2005-07-14 19:10:58 skrev todd <todd@REDACTED>:
>
>> No. It's about managing risk. You are asking people to use a 
>> language  they know nothing about, that uses a completely different 
>> paradigm, for  which they have no people experienced in the language, 
>> for which they  have no idea what will happen if things go wrong, 
>> and  provides  facilities that they know can be done in C++ and does 
>> not require  duplicate infrastructures.
>
>
> I don't think that's what they're asked to do.
> Most of the time, what we ask people is to at
> least _study_ the issue. Quite often, Erlang is dismissed
> based on prejudice and, at most, a very cursory glance.

At a telecom company I worked at we studied the issue. I was the erlang 
proponent.
It may be that people do study, but don't come to the conclusion
you think obvious because they value something different than you do.

>
> If you're investing millions annually into developing complex
> software, why is it unreasonable to put some money into actually
> _investigating_ if new implementation techniques might shave off
> a portion of that, perhaps getting you to market faster, and
> allowing you to save money on maintenance as well?

Perhaps is the big word. Unless it's a clear win people want to stick
with what they know will work.

>
> Mike Williams used to say: "if you don't conduct experiments
> at the beginning of your project, your whole project will
> become an experiment".

Every project is an experiment. Which is why people want to
stick with what has worked in the past. Conducting a little
experiment won't change the weight of experience. The interesting book, 
paradox of
choice,  talks about how people are risk adverse and would rather
take a smaller win now than a potentially bigger but less sure win
later.

>> Don't trivialize what is involved.
>
>
> At some point, many of us have had to choose: keep pushing
> or take a step back and quit trying to make people see the
> light. This is not trivialising the issue (well, to some extent
> it is, but only relatively)

When you say the reason people don't want to use erlang is simply
because they don't want to use multiple languages,
that is trivializing the issue.






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