The Industry choice

[Eric Pederson]

Cameron Laird wrote:

> 
> Let me add a cautionary note, though:  Big Companies, 
> including Oracle, Software AG, IBM, Cisco, and so on, have
> adopted Tcl over and over.  All of them still rely on Tcl
> for crucial products.  All of them also have employees who
> sincerely wonder, "Tcl?  Isn't that dead?"
> 
> I offer this as a counter-example to the belief that Adop-
> tion by a heavyweight necessarily results in widespread
> acceptance.
> -- 


I think the adoption of computer languages is quite complex, but one useful metaphorical model may be gravity, e.g. the clumpy universe of stars, with gravity working on different scales to shape the overall distribution of matter.  Adoption by a heavyweight may have some effect if that force is allowed to operate on other bodies, but the overall distribution of "mass" is complex.

In the practice of business, companies generally find a need to consciously limit methodological diversity as they grow in size.  Control is usually made more centralized, but becomes more distant from the atom (programmer writing code) as the firm grows large, and entropy becomes the enemy, lower level entropy a source of uncertainty and risk.  If so, there is some legitimate reason for trying to "standardize" on tools (i.e. programming languages).

Less sophisticated business minds may latch onto the notion of gains from economies of scale, which is usually an easy sell (and good route for a fast career rise) but an overly simple optimization.

Not to say that such restrictive mindsets and policies are inevitable, but they seem the prevailing wind.

Preserving intellectual diversity and innovation may be critical to a big company in the long run, and allowing the use of (for example) Python would seem very in tune with those goals.

It might be nice if it was widely understood (in IT) that Python was a language any competent programmer could pick up in an afternoon, such that Java, C, and Perl shops would not be concerned about the need for their staff to learn a new language.



Eric Pederson
"Linear?  What is linear?"




Digital M4 (music) http://www.songzilla.blogspot.com
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