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Date:Mon Jul 6 10:11:49 1993 
Subject:Re: Bugs, Death and everything 
From:jlc (Jonathan Cunningham) 
Volume-ID:930706.03 

> > My colleague Alistair has said that I could have developed my image
> > analysis and multivariate analysis system faster and more efficiently if
> > I had used Z80 machine code rather than poplog.
> 
> A few idle thoughts. I wonder how easy it would have been for someone
> else to maintain and debug, or port to another machine.
> 
> I don't doubt what you say, but I wonder about the *range* of
> programming tasks for which what you say is true.

My second inclination (after any setback) has always been to write
everything myself. I believe that for many problems it takes longer
to understand the (usually poor) documentation and limitations of a
software library package than it does to write your own. Not that
Poplog has poor documentation - it is actually quite good, but the
sheer amount of it makes it hard to find things: it takes a long
time to learn where to find things (large Lisp systems are even
worse/larger).

The best (only?) argument I've heard against this position (which Aaron
wonders about here) is maintainability. It is probably going to be
even harder for someone to understand my code (which I'm unlikely
to document more than necessary) than a library which is intended for
use many times (and which they might already be familiar with). There
can be exceptions (eg specific application/general package).

OTOH, I'm not (usually :-) tempted to write my own compiler, OS etc.
Large, familiar, well understood pieces of software with standard
interfaces can *not* be used ok - and this is my understanding of
the point made by the original poster - *unless* they are robust.

With hindsight, I think that the liability of X is going to seriously
diminish the attractiveness of Unix in the marketplace (and products,
like Poplog, which now rely on it). After my limited contact with X,
I am going to avoid any further contact as much as possible. Maybe,
as implied by some of the postings, it is now much improved. Too
late: once bitten, twice shy.

Nevertheless, Unix and X are still very popular on "Unix boxes" (of
course!) and in academic environments (I discount their commercial use
as database servers as irrelevant - but I won't go into that). So it
will be very interesting over the next three years to see what happens.
Will OS/2 make a comeback? Can microsoft swamp everyone
with NT? Who will be using Windows? Can IBM and Apple convince
everyone that Pink is the way forward?

Jonathan Cunningham

p.s. Relevance to popforum? Suppose, as I think quite likely, Unix
takes a diminishing share of the market (and maybe even unit sales).
Will people still use Poplog?