Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!trane.uninett.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.crl.com!decwrl!svc.portal.com!news1.best.com!news.best.com!tmb From: tmb@concerto.best.com Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.python,comp.lang.sather,comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Re: Rapid Prototyping + statically-typed OOPLs? Date: 13 Jul 1995 19:04:53 GMT Organization: * Lines: 42 Message-ID: References: <805548287snz@galacta.demon.co.uk> <3u0tan$gj5@News1.mcs.net> Reply-To: tmb@best.com NNTP-Posting-Host: tmb.vip.best.com In-reply-to: jim.fleming@bytes.com's message of 12 Jul 1995 16:30:15 GMT Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.object:33479 comp.lang.beta:461 comp.lang.c++:128939 comp.lang.eiffel:9242 comp.lang.python:5017 comp.lang.sather:1933 comp.lang.smalltalk:24365 In article <3u0tan$gj5@News1.mcs.net> jim.fleming@bytes.com (Jim Fleming) writes: | A similar situation exists between the "troff camp" and the "FrameMaker | camp". I spent years at Bell Labs trying to convince people that Word | and FrameMaker improved productivity because they offered instant feedback | that troff did not provide. People still use troff, and in some cases I | can understand their reasoning. In some cases, people just do not like | change. | | I have come to the conclusion that there must be right brain and left | brain people. One group uses troff and C++ and the other group uses tools | which provide rapid feedback and do not subject the developer to long | edit/compile/test cycles. WYSIWYG doesn't mean that you are going to complete the job faster or better. In particular, for writing long textual documents, it is important to concentrate on content first and not worry about formatting. Using a tool like FrameMaker is likely to decrease productivity in those situations, rather than increase it (I believe this view is supported by a study, but I don't have the reference). Another problem is that tools, like FrameMaker, that are not compilation based make the use and integration of general purpose tools, like Perl, difficult at best. I think the difference is not right-brain vs. left-brain, it is whether the task is comparatively small and whether the people involved are willing to invest the time in the steeper learning curve to learn more powerful tools. Note that there is no intrinsic reason why compilation/linking should be any slower than the screen update on an interactive tools, and, in fact, with modern tools, it isn't. Furthermore, modern debugging environments do support fix-and-continue and a host of other tools. | Sometimes it appears that the West Coast approach (XEROX Parc) is visual | and rapid while the East Coast approach (Bell Labs) is textual and slow. | Both influences on the industry have been significant. In my opinion there | is room for both approaches. The East Coast has had Lisp. Bell Labs has SML. I think your coastal division makes little sense. Thomas.