[FRIAM] IT is Not Sustainable
Frank Wimberly
wimberly3 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 26 10:43:48 EST 2019
June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message). 5ESS used
in a mobile telephone network. The 5ESS Switching System is a Class 5
telephone electronic switching system developed by ...
-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly
My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
Phone (505) 670-9918
On Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 8:36 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
> Frank writes:
>
>
>
> “This was the telephone network in question.“
>
>
>
> With the mobile carriers and VOIP, I wonder how much of that code is still
> used? I once worked for a small company that wrote software to do billing
> for long distance telephone carriers. I was amazed by the seemingly
> arbitrary complexity. Complex at a policy and inter-organizational level,
> not just the software.
>
>
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Frank Wimberly <
> wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Date: *Thursday, December 26, 2019 at 5:39 AM
> *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] IT is Not Sustainable
>
>
>
> At Bell Labs we sure didn't pay anyone by LOC. We also had code reviews
> and software tools to enforce standards and very high pay. With a brand
> new PhD I made more than all but the 3 most senior members of the CS
> faculty at Pitt where I was a grad student. This was the telephone network
> in question.
>
>
>
> Despite the high pay I disliked software administration methodology. The
> disagreements between the software tool developers (version control,
> integration of subsystems, compilers, etc) and the implementors of the
> applications, such as call processing, were epic. Recall that Bell Labs
> invented C and Unix. After 18 months I returned to Pittsburgh to work at
> Carnegie Mellon in Robotics for two thirds the salary.
>
>
>
> Number 5 ESS was first deployed in March 1982, 4 years after work began.
> I suspect that it didn't have 200 million lines of code then, but close to
> it. Maybe Dave doesn't consider it an IT project but many of the software
> tools that were developed were included in later Unix releases, I believe.
>
>
>
> It's going to be a beautiful day in Santa Fe.
>
>
>
> Frank
>
>
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------
> Frank Wimberly
>
> My memoir:
> https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly
>
> My scientific publications:
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
>
> Phone (505) 670-9918
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 1:28 AM Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com>
> wrote:
>
> Spot on.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 2:29 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
> Most programmers won't struggle to rationalize or improve code written by
> other people. The problem is that people are selfish. They think that
> their 10K LOC problem is beautiful and nimble, but that 1M LOC was once
> that too. It's the behavior of teenagers.
>
> On 12/25/19, 10:47 PM, "Friam on behalf of Russell Standish" <
> friam-bounces at redfish.com on behalf of lists at hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
>
> It's all about the LOC! Actually, I kind of agree - having worked on
> some MegaLOC codebases that functionally seemed to be no more complex
> than a 10KLOC project I'm involved in, the 10KLOC project is much more
> nimble - compile times are far less, making changes to the code easier
> and bugs less troublesome to winkle out.
>
> I've also refactored or rewritten pieces of code to slash the LOC by a
> factor of 3 or more for that particular section (eg 3KLOC -> 1KLOC) -
> but usually when bugs and problems kept on cropping up in that
> section.
>
> Even though the LOC is an entirely bogus measurement - if you paid a
> programmer by LOC, you'd get boilerplate and crappy comments.
>
> --
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
> Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC>
> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20191226/e84313c4/attachment.html>
More information about the Friam
mailing list