Lisp development with macros faster than Python development?..

[Dan Sommers]

On Wed, 06 Jul 2005 08:27:55 -0500,
Larry Bates <lbates at syscononline.com> wrote:

[ reusable, stable, debugged, and documented libraries are a Good
    Thing ]

Absolutely.

Two related stories from my days working as a software engineer for a
large telecomm company.  Both stories begin with the annual ritual of
management telling us that code reuse was the silver bullet of software
development.

1.  We replied that we needed about 5 calendar years to design, develop,
debug, and document sufficient libraries to pay for the effort.  Then
management would tell us that 5 years is too long, and the project(s)
would be scrapped.  I worked there for 12 years, and was still watching
new hires argue over linked list code and build tools when I left.

2.  Right after that (and often in the same speech), management would
also tell us that they would be measuring our productivity by (a) LOC
written rather than LOC reused, and (b) the number of new ideas and code
we submitted for patent.  There is no better example of a Mixed Message.

(Not to mention that we did all or most of our coding in C and C++, and
every department and every project had its own method(s) of determining
what a Line Of Code looked like, but that's even farther off-topic....)

Regards,
Dan

-- 
Dan Sommers
<http://www.tombstonezero.net/dan/>