Re: [BLACKBOX] Questions about inheritance

From: [at]} <Wojtek>
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:49:35 -0400

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Rainer:

> Whe have experienced the VME hardware to be a long term technique compared
> to the PC world, which is important if you have to run and maintain systems
> for a period of up to 15 years.

An interesting observation. I will keep it in mind.

[LabView]
> This is an interesting topic which in the end could lead to a discussion
> about success of programming languages
> - on the market
> - in the brains of people.

My observations tell me, that LabView fulfills one important role: it is
good at catching attention and in creating impression that lots has been
done. I noticed this during various meetings. An engineer would come with
a conceptual design of a control system illustrated with slick screen
shots of the proposed LabView GUI. There would be a long discussion
concerning the shape and color of GUI buttons. The management would walk
away with impression that good progress was made by the engineer.

In reality there would be very little progress. Very impressive GUIs
can be created in LabView by dragging and dropping GUI elements from a
palette. These GUIs are completely empty. They perform no function. They
only look good. The real "meat" of the application consists of the network
of "virtual instruments" graphically connected behind the scenes with a
mesh of wires. These are exceedingly messy to develop and debug. Even a
very simple mesh of connections becomes an unbelievable mess very soon
into the development proces. But this is hidden from the management eyes.

The engineer is using the credit he won from the management during
the 1st, easy phase while working on the 2nd development phase, when he is
struggling with the mess. The 1st phase is the most important, because it
consists of staking the engineer claim to the project. People and money
get allocated during the 1st phase. The 2nd phase is hidden from the view.

In my opinion LabView became such a huge success because it correctly
addreses the corporate need of people to get attention and stake their
claims. Once this is done, who cares anymore how much work it will take to
complete the project using a tool, which is in fact inadequate? Everyone
knows that projects run overtime and overbudget. Nobody is going to
dissect the reasons why it is so. LabView is exploiting the typical life
cycle of a corporate project: promise a lot, and then work hard and
complain a lot.

BTW, my observations can perhaps be applied to BlackBox. An impressive
palette of good-looking graphical elements would be very handy in using
BlackBox much the same way as LabView. I know such graphical elements
exist on the CPC website. A dedicated BlackBox engineer can use those much
the same way LabView is being used. Compose impressive, though empty GUIs
and claim a lot. Making such claims is based on the desire of your
management to get stupified. The managers really do not want to know much.
They do want to walk away feeling good. Slick graphics can achieve that
goal.

> The hardware concept (standardized motherboard which is customisable
> via project specific daughter boards) you described does make a lot of sense
> to me. I'm thinking in the same direction with my "home project".

Please have a look at a simpler version of my hardware platform:
http://www.blackstamp.net

Best regards,

Wojtek

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Received on Sat Mar 26 2011 - 16:49:35 UTC