Integer micro-benchmarks [Smalltalk Multi-Precision Numerics vis-a-vis Highly Optimized Fixed Size Integer C++ Numerics]

[Andrea Ferro]

"Ian Upright" <ian-news at upright.net> wrote in message
news:vifheto0jmk2ermdgk4s19dre8s8il93da at 4ax.com...
> "Andrea Ferro" <AndreaF at UrkaDVD.it> wrote:
>
> >hmmmm I'm still to keep up with Smalltalk "news". I'll take self some time in
> >the future. I told you, no matter how much I like this sort of languages I
> >couldn't yet "sell" their use here in Italy. But maybe that's because I'm
doing
> >too much embedded stuff!
>
> So are you implying that you likely couldn't sell the use of .NET either?

For the embedded stuff surely not. For the platform in general I'm beginning to
talk to people of where MS is heading (actually presenting it not as a MS
imposition of sort but as MS way of attacking a more general direction of
evolution and talking of IBM research on WebServices and their acceptance of
SOAP and so on). The reaction is IMO fear-driven conservactionism.

They say it is useless. They say they already can have two programs talk with
sokets. They say all sort of things you can expect from somenone not seing the
picture. They do not perceive it as an anabling technology that could (if the
promises are met) make the Internet change from a network for umans to a network
for computers.

When Java came people was just beginning to understand HTML. Pages were static.
Java won it's place here for animations and special effects. There's almost no
"system with a web interface". They started doing that a couple of years ago
when some finantial services (Banks mostly) started enabling account balance
checking on the internet. Systems are mostly non internet enabled. There's
practically no case of two companies managing order-ship-account and stuff
electronically: everithing is on paper (that's a legal concern too).

It is my opinion that no SW shop will be able to "sell" .NET here. But MS will.
And we'll use .NET because it's there. VC7 is better than VC6. VB.NET and
ASP.NET are cool to play with. They'll use them for that reason, not for
technical resons.

Most companies are not internet. They have a Win95 machine with dialup everibody
uses to check e-mails. The web site is on a ISP machine and changes once in two
years. It's there because it must be, not because it gives a service. Large
companies do business on AS400. Those having NT do because they have a SW not
supported on Win98.

I even know of a SW shop doing C++ development with 20 developers working there
... and at an interview, when I asked what design methodology they used ... it
came out they do not even write /* */ comments in the sources "because that's
not needed". I almost falled out of the chair. Then of course they allocate 3-4
weeks to change the app so that configuration is stored on SQL DB instead of
.ini files.

That's the mainstream. Then, of course, there are the exceptions. Agusta does
elicopters (not only civil ones) and have state of the art SW labs. In ADA. And
many others too. There's some very good SW developed here too. Even commercial
or business. But the mainstream culture is pretty low. Many developers are good.
Many could be good in a good environment.

Smalltalk? .NET? Well, someone is using them or will. But most SW shops
management knows nothing of those and if the management does not know the
programmers should not use. Dilbert rules.


--

Andrea Ferro

---------
Brainbench C++ Master. Scored higher than 97% of previous takers
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