[FRIAM] Seaside (Smalltalk web development framework)

[Bill Eldridge]

Joshua Thorp wrote:
>
> On Sep 14, 2006, at 3:17 AM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>
>> While possible, the idea that 
>>
>> university or hobby software can be better than software developed by a 
>>
>> multi-billion dollar corporations doesn't jump out as a likely scenario.
>>
>>
>> Interoperability is God, and failing to provide it is a fine reason for 
>>
>> a software project to fail!
>>
>
> If you are a multi-billion dollar company why interoperate?  Just 
> declare the rest of the market for suckers and dilettantes.  
> Unfortunately for billion dollar companies its turtles all the way 
> down and they struggle mightily just to interoperate with their own 
> products--and largely fail. 
Shrinkwrapped software is a tiny minority these days of the total 
software pool.
Back end business systems are much larger, and one of their prime tasks 
is B2B and B2C operations
to automate sales and distribution, supply chains, information access, 
customer tailoring, etc.
Interoperability is a very important component of that task. RPC, CORBA, 
XML, Web Services/SOAP, Indigo
are all approaches that are supposed to make this interoperability 
easier, but we seem
to always be stuck in unhappy land.

Here's an interesting new attempt:  http://www.zeroc.com
>
> Seems to me the very concept of a multi-billion dollar company as 
> software producer put up against small groups of hackers is absurd 
> anyway.  It really hinges on the make up of the small teams of people 
> inside that large capital structure that are doing the real work 
> anyway.  Plenty of fine coders exist inside and out of such large 
> companies and depending on management and marketing or acquisitions 
> they may have more or less time to deliver a finished product.  But 
> more often than not,  though a billion dollar company may be good at 
> well crafted design process, I would bet they find their best ideas 
> from  those who do something for the sake of art as an amateur,  or to 
> push forward the frontier of ideas as a scholar. 
Not to get into a flame pit, but isn't that a bit elitist?
Some people are very creative when working on a directed, corporate-goal 
style problem.
Many of those goals are very pragmatic, customer- and market-driven, and 
so have a pretty
high payoff in satisfaction if solved elegantly - the solution will be 
used extensively.

I would also point out one of my long-term examples of how DEC or HP 
came up with
a good robust extended file permissions system on Unix, while the open 
source world took
years more effort and AFAIK never came up with anything usable for 
serious applications.
Yes, it partly comes down to the teams of programmers, plus their 
support, their motivation
and incentive, the maintainability of the project, including the 
oft-maligned marketing aspect
(even in the open source world, if a good project isn't marketed well, 
it won't attract new
programmers, bug reports, etc.)
>
> 'Can't we all just get along?'
>
> What we are talking around here is just as personal as race and 
> politics--where do you fall on the artist<--scientist-->engineer 
> spectrum.  Engineers are most comfortable in slow moving vehicles with 
> plenty of restraints and air bags.  Artists are most happy in new 
> concept cars that are untried and untested--they might die but at 
> least it will be a statement of some sort.  And of course testing cars 
> is for scientists.  (Some may quibble with this,  but I would have to 
> say check out the difference between math departments in an 
> Engineering school versus an arts and sciences school -- Engineers are 
> most comfortable working with equations from a table and processes 
> from a lab manual,  scientists get a big kick out of deriving 
> equations that are already in that engineering text.  And I think 
> artists are largely there for the drugs and the women..)
I think George Michaels and Gary Glitter are there for the boys ;-)
>  I couldn't imagine the same languages appealing to all three crowds.  
> And why should they?
>
> We can certainly tell a lot by the tools a person uses (and the 
> company they keep).  And if you don't like engineers I would say 
> better to avoid C++,  project managers,  and multi-billion dollar 
> companies.  
>
> Another angle to this whole mess is that it is possible to write very 
> unstable and largely un-useful code in C++,  it just takes a long time 
> to get there.  If you want, you can get there faster in python.
>
> --joshua
>
>   
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20060914/13c7f595/attachment.html