Future reuse of code

[James Cameron]

Hi I'm developing a program and the client is worried about future
reuse of the code. Say 5, 10, 15 years down the road. This will be a
major factor in selecting the development language. Any comments on
past experience, research articles, comments on the matter would be
much appreciated. I suspect something like C would be the best based
on comments I received from the VB news group.

Thanks for the help in advance

James Cameron

[Roedy Green]

On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 06:12:10 GMT, rl*@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard
Bos) wrote or quoted :

Perhaps most amazing, this program was, and still is, written in...
Clipper.

This suggests another general principle. If you are interested in
longevity, write in a language supported by as many vendors as
possible. We have seen the demise of dBase, as the ball was passed and
fumbled with the decline of Ashton Tate.
Wirth might suggest always using a language simple enough that you
could fund your own compiler if necessary.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.

[Joona I Palaste]

Buster Copley <bu****@none.co m> scribbled the following
on comp.lang.c:

John D. wrote:

ja***********@b indereng.com.au (James Cameron) wrote in message news:<45******* *************** ****@posting.go ogle.com>...

Hi I'm developing a program and the client is worried about future
reuse of the code. Say 5, 10, 15 years down the road. This will be a
major factor in selecting the development language. Any comments on
past experience, research articles, comments on the matter would be
much appreciated. I suspect something like C would be the best based
on comments I received from the VB news group.
The best language to ensure future reuse of the code is english.
Whatever programming language you chose always remember to document
your code.

Hey, be careful! Not everyone's an anglophone. Other than that,
very well said.

I, for one, learned BASIC before I learned English. I remember being
pleased that "if... then" meant the same thing as English as it did in
BASIC.

--
/-- Joona Palaste (pa*****@cc.hel sinki.fi) ---------------------------\
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| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"As we all know, the hardware for the PC is great, but the software sucks."
- Petro Tyschtschenko

[Joona I Palaste]

LX-i <LX*****@netsca pe.net> scribbled the following
on comp.lang.c:

James Cameron wrote:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You're a great filmmaker - why are you switching to programming? :)

Is this the same James Cameron who created the pptpclient SourceForge
project?

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/-- Joona Palaste (pa*****@cc.hel sinki.fi) ---------------------------\
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| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/

[Richard Bos]

lv*****@yahoo.c om wrote:

According to Richard Bos <rl*@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl>:
:"jce" <de*********@ho tmail.com> wrote:
:
:> COBOL has had a resurgence recently - question is whether it will hold up
:> for 15 more years....Probab ly will....but you have to hope that the
:> compilers/$$$ keep up or you'll just have something that works and isn't
:> bleeding edge (what's wrong with that?).
:
:I don't know what's wrong with not being bleeding-edge (apart form Not
:Being Cool In The Eyes Of The Press, to which I say: Pfffrrrrttt...) ,

Well, another thing is finding adequately trained staff, training materials,
etc.
Yes, that's another good point against being bleeding edge. You cannot
possibly have _adequately_ trained staff for a language that's less than
five years old, unless your definition of adequate is "just about good
enough to battle through the project", rather than, as it should be,
"quite good enough to get things done the right way".
Trying to find resources to get things done in the 'stable' languages
becomes harder (and more costly) as time goes on.

Snigger.

Richard

[Jim Morcombe]

James

How much time will be spect maintaining the code?

If the code willbe stable and not maintained too often, then development
time will be more important than maintenance time.

However, if it will be maintained quite frequently and you don't mind a
longer development time, just go with "C" or Cobol, depending on the type of
application.

If development cost is critical, then just choose any development language
that is not undergoing a lot of chnge at the moment. Probably one that you
have skills to use already.

Jim
James Cameron <ja***********@ bindereng.com.a u> wrote in message
news:45******** *************** ***@posting.goo gle.com...

Hi I'm developing a program and the client is worried about future
reuse of the code. Say 5, 10, 15 years down the road. This will be a
major factor in selecting the development language. Any comments on
past experience, research articles, comments on the matter would be
much appreciated. I suspect something like C would be the best based
on comments I received from the VB news group.

Thanks for the help in advance

James Cameron

[Peter E.C. Dashwood]

"James J. Gavan" <jj*****@shaw.c a> wrote in message
news:3F******** *******@shaw.ca ...

"Peter E.C. Dashwood" wrote:

Nope. Disagree strongly. The days of procedural code and the necessity to maintain it are nearly over. It is very wrong NOW to design systems around a particular language.

The days of the "Waterfall" and "One Language Wonder" system development
are, thankfully, in rapid decline.
Now don't shilly shally - your new 'audience' might find it enlightening.
"Design systems around a particular language" and "One Language Wonder".

Spell it out simply as percentages :-

- Languages you use on a daily basis - x%
- Languages & Tools you use to produce your Components on a daily basis -

x%
Jimmy

Sorry Jimmy,

I'd like to respond but I have no idea what you are talking about.

Percentages based on what I do personally are of no consequence. Percentages
based on the last commercial installation I managed are of little
consequence either. Today's percentages could vary wildly tomorrow, and
there is no guarantee that a percentage of development true today will
continue to be true indefinitely.

I can say that the results from both above would involve SQL Server, VB,
Perl, Java and COBOL. But so what?

I don't see any "shilly-shally" in my post.

My point was that it is wrong (today) to design systems around the
capabilities of a given procedural language (irrespective of what that
language is...). As for "One Language wonder"... well, that is just an
extension of the same idea. In the past it was possible to get by on one
language. It isn't anymore, yet there are still people who, rather than
simply expand their skill set, cling frantically to the notion that THEIR
language is wonderful and can do ANYTHING better than any other language.
(hence, "One Language Wonder"...)

We SHOULD be designing systems based on Business Functionality, rather than
computer programming languages.

I contend that Component Based Development is a really good way to do this,
and it happens to be the best way to ensure re-use of code (in my opinion)
which is what the topic is about.

Maybe you read more into it than I intended or maybe I just don't understand
what you are driving at.

Pete.

[LX-i]

Joona I Palaste wrote:

LX-i <LX*****@netsca pe.net> scribbled the following
on comp.lang.c:

James Cameron wrote:
^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^
You're a great filmmaker - why are you switching to programming? :)

Is this the same James Cameron who created the pptpclient SourceForge
project?

I have no idea. :)
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[Howard Brazee]

On 6-Aug-2003, Joona I Palaste <pa*****@cc.hel sinki.fi> wrote:

I, for one, learned BASIC before I learned English. I remember being
pleased that "if... then" meant the same thing as English as it did in
BASIC.

I'm glad you shared that. I have wondered how often this is true.

I have heard of pilots who know how to speak all the English that they need to
talk to Air Traffic Controllers and other aspects of their job (every
international airport except for Montreal's speaks English) - but don't know
English hardly at all for non-business purposes.

[Aleksi Kallio]

>>I, for one, learned BASIC before I learned English. I remember being

pleased that "if... then" meant the same thing as English as it did in
BASIC.

I'm glad you shared that. I have wondered how often this is true.

Sounds familiar. When we started to learn English at school we had
competitions where you had to come up with word that begins with the
letter that the previous word ended with. My team won always because I
knew so many BASIC commands and C64 related terms - but I had no idea
what was the meaning of those words outside the context of C64. :)

[Bob Wolfe]

qe*@pobox.com (Paul Hsieh) wrote:

ja***********@ bindereng.com.a u (James Cameron) wrote:

Hi I'm developing a program and the client is worried about future
reuse of the code. Say 5, 10, 15 years down the road. This will be a
major factor in selecting the development language. Any comments on
past experience, research articles, comments on the matter would be
much appreciated. I suspect something like C would be the best based
on comments I received from the VB news group.
Well, C will be around in 15 years in the same sense that COBOL is
still with us today. But probably something that should be pointed
out is that there are very few C compilers out there that don't also
support C++. There are very few if any universities teaching computer
science that teach C but not C++. So you could easily make a
strategic decision between C and C++ according to what makes sense for
you today, and certainly both will still exist in some way shape or
form 15 years from now.

That said, Java certainly has enough momentum today to suggest it will
probably exist in 15 years. Though whether or not it will supplant
C++ or other alternatives is too hard to see. The problem with Java
is that if it fails to continue to gain momentum, it might very
quickly be relegated to that of a niche market. I won't make a call
as to which way I think it will go, but I think its fair to say that
both (dominance over C++, or relegation to a niche) are possible. I
think its very unlikely that it will completely disappear in 15 years.

COBOL and Pascal (the other groups you crossposted this message to)
will decrease in usage over time, not increase. There is absolutely
no new serious development being done in either language.

Paul:

I'm curious......ca n you provide me with a reference to the source of
the above comment?

Did you read that in a magazine article or was it a reference from a
Gartner Group study?

I am indeed curious.

In 15
years, Pascal will probably be completely dead, and the COBOL
community will be reduced even from the size of today's community
(human mortality alone will guarantee this.)

Bob Wolfe
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