use Perl

• That's Funny! (Score:1)

  by chromatic (983)

  Your comment on his post gives me the impression that you didn't understand Brooks's essay either. In my experience, almost no one does.

  I read the essay two nights ago, and all I have to say is that--whether due to Moore's Law or whatever, I don't care--I'm at least an order of magnitude more productive doing test-driven development with a language that supplies automatic memory management and the creation of domain-appropriate abstractions than I would be with the best language and platform available fo
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by jdavidb (1361)

    I'm at least an order of magnitude more productive doing test-driven development with a language that supplies automatic memory management and the creation of domain-appropriate abstractions than I would be

    Of course, Brooke's assertion was that no single advancement would yield an order of magnitude improvement. You listed a combination of advancements.

    --
    J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by chromatic (983)

      Indeed. How curious then that a development process such as, oh, extreme programming, is obviously no silver bullet.

      (Or it could be that a lot of people haven't actually read and thought about the essay.)
      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brian_d_foy (44)

        I think my original weblog entry was probably mostly out of a minor annoyance about how some people talk about XP, and I felt it on that particular day for whatever reason. That was back when I was making a lot of weblog entries, basically taking something I thought about for thirty seconds and just saying it. It's the sort of thing I would have mentioned at a party but would not have been interested in talking about for more than five minutes.
        
        I used to treat blogs more like "hey, here's this thing I though
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by brian_d_foy (44)

    "No silver bullet" means, according to Fred Brooks: "There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself, promises an order in magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity." Despite the particular context of his assertion, I think that's generally true for anything in life. One thing isn't going to make the world a better place.
    
    You say that you're an order of magnitude more productive using test driven development and a language with automati
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by chromatic (983)

      I thought Brooks qualified his theory with "In the next ten years", but I'm too lazy to walk two rooms over to check right now. Regardless, our understandings are equivalent.

      For what it's worth, I do think a lot of people claiming "no silver bullet" are pessimists.
      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brian_d_foy (44)

        Well, in his particular situation of computer perfomance, he did say in the next decade. The sentence before my quote is "But, as week look to the horizon of a decade hence, we see no silver bullet". In that cases, he's talking about computer performance, but I see that as an application of his larger point.
        
        He later says, however, that software will always be hard, despite any decade comment:

        I beleive the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of [the conceptual connecti
        • Re: (Score:2)

          by brian_d_foy (44)

          Why can't I edit comments? :(
          
          I meant to say, if you think that first paragraph is false, then Brooks isn't really saying anything. If you think it's true, as I do, then he's saying there's no silver bullet.
    • Oh yeah!? (Score:1)

      by sigzero (5768)

      One thing isn't going to make the world a better place.

      Peanut butter. The world is certainly better off for it! And I won't hear any different.