Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!umdac!fizban.solace.mh.se!paladin.american.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!caen!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!news.uoregon.edu!news.bc.net!unixg.ubc.ca!info.ucla.edu!library.ucla.edu!galaxy.ucr.edu!corvette.ucr.edu!thp From: thp@PROBLEM_WITH_INEWS_DOMAIN_FILE (Tom Payne) 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: 14 Jul 1995 18:18:54 GMT Organization: University of California, Riverside Department of Computer Science Lines: 44 Message-ID: <3u6cee$igg@galaxy.ucr.edu> References: <805548287snz@galacta.demon.co.uk> <3u3cdm$pu1@noc.tor.hookup.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: corvette.ucr.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.object:33566 comp.lang.beta:465 comp.lang.c++:129296 comp.lang.eiffel:9300 comp.lang.python:5071 comp.lang.sather:1941 comp.lang.smalltalk:24424 Neil Wilson (neil@aldur.demon.co.uk) wrote: : Bob Hutchison (hutch@RedRock.com) wrote: : : I've also noticed that I have so far been : : able to take the results of the prototype and implement them in Eiffel : : with very little difficulty, much less than I expected. : It is this translation step that bothers me. What is the magnitude of : effort required to translate from experimental system to production : system? Translation usually introduces defects if done by humans (and : sometimes even if done by computer). How is the level of quality : maintained? : Does using an exploratory language instead of a production language : actually save the time required for subsequent translation? Why bother : translating at all? : When you're experimenting with the exploratory language is it the entire : system or just a sub-section you usually work on? Customers are better at saying, "That's not what I had in mind," than they are at giving accurate specifications ahead of time. For that reason, many software teams will prototype, say, the GUI interface of a system in, say, Visual Basic to elicit the real requirements from the customers prior to coding the full system in, say, Visual C++. The translation (recoding) step begins as soon as the team is confident that they have elicited the real requirements. Typically this is long before the prototype has the functionality of the full system. The benefits of coding the production system in another language depend on the attrubutes of that language: * noninterpreted for efficiency, * statically type checked for rapid debugging of complex code * OO for software reuse and so on. Tom Payne