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On Mon, 22 May 2006, Les May wrote:
> Isn't it time to start asking why if Component Pascal has all the
> advantages which everyone agrees about, including me, it has made so
> little headway either amongst professional programmers or amongst people
> who do another job but need to program to do it better? Is the BB
> framework a hindrance or a help in increasing its spread?
I think the framework is both helping at hurting at the same time.
To me, the framework is one of the greatest contributors to my
productivity, because I am accepting it. I also think the same framework
is a hindrance to spreading BB. Read the previous messages where commercial
developers who themselves think BB is great, at the same time are not
recommending it for commercial development. Read their reasoning.
I do not think they are complaining about the language.
Could please someone from the Commercial Aisle comment on this? Which part
is the biggest hindrance: the language, the framework, lack of "goodies",
look-and-feel, or the documentation?
> Component Pascal integrated into VS, especially if it were a 'free'
> Express version, would give much more exposure to the language as well
> as being a viable programming environment for serious programming..
I am looking at how one of my "super-tech" collaborators is joggling
VB, VCC, vendor-supplied DLLs, and Active-X controls. He is "dragging-and-
dropping" all that stuff around under some sort of Visual Studio.
I think this is what most users/developers expect: drag, drop,
right-click, generate some sort of a GUI or help file, and all of that
"automagically".
I also noticed the guy is neither studying the project files nor
the documentation. As soon as dragged-and-dropped something, he
immediately hits "Run". If a compile error pops up, he corrects
what he thinks was a problem (not always this was *the* problem) and
hits "Run" again. As soon as the compilation is done, he tries to run.
If a run-time error pops up, he immediately fires up the runtime
debugger and looks at the variables in the closest vicinity
of the exception.
I am not sure if he ever read the entire program he was working on.
As soon as he grabs what looks like a string, he starts pulling
that particular string.
I suspect this is how many programmers work these days. BBB, on the
other hand, emphasizes the structure, the need to read and understand,
and so on. It does not fare well with my guy. I never convinced him
to try BB, even though we were working on the same project and he was
supposed to help me. But he insisted on using VB, not BB.
So maybe there is some hint in these observations.
> Embracing the dot net platform means that Microsoft does all the work of
> shifting things to 64 bit processors and the Mono project does all the
> work of shifting things to Linux.
Cannot beat 'em, join 'em.
> On the other such a shift would move away from the 'Oberon' philosophy
> embraced by BB as set out in 'FFF97-Oberon in the Real World' (The
> School of Niklaus Wirth - The Art of Simplicity 2000).
I do not know this particular text. So maybe the philosophy is right.
So we may continue sticking to this philosophy. Quite likely, the results
will continue to be the same.
I think we should try to understand what is the biggest hurdle and try to
address the hurdle. However, it is easy to pick the wrong one. So we
should think before doing. What are the suggestions of the Commercial
Wing? How to decrease the "opportunity costs" such that your programmers
would consider it worthwile to learn BB rather than run away from it?
W.
--- BlackBox
--- send subject HELP or UNSUBSCRIBE to blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
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Received on Tue May 23 2006 - 00:09:35 UTC