Subject: Erlang adventures; Erlang image and "success"

[Ulf Wiger]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Samuel Tardieu wrote:

sam>My advice would be: people, if you build a complex system in
sam>Erlang, take a small part of the time you have freed by using
sam>Erlang to build a graphical monitoring of your application. It
sam>works.

Yes, this reminds me of Martin Wikborg telling me of the thesis
project to write an army troop movement simulator in Erlang.
They spent 6-7 weeks (I think) writing the actual simulator, and then
quickly pasted together a GUI for the purposes of the demo. Almost all
the audience's attention during the demo was focused at the GUI...

I've had similar painful experiences -- the most flagrant being one
where I demo:ed a decision support system in Dubai. It had a decent
enough GUI, but the guy in the booth next to me (Admiral Systems,
Inc.) had a simulation tool with a *suberb* GUI. My explanation that
"this is live, that is Memorex" didn't seem to cut mustard. All
the customers saw was the GUI.

So, yes, it's all too easy to think that the customer will realise
the magic that goes on behind the scenes -- very few of them will.
You have to make it visible.

/Uffe
-- 
Ulf Wiger, Chief Designer AXD 301         <ulf.wiger@REDACTED>
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