Kylix vs. gcc Development

Remote writes: "Borland has a paper [.pdf] by William Roetzheim comparing development and maintenance costs of software development using Kylix and gcc. Bottom line is that applications written with gcc are twice as expensive (timewise) both to write and to maintain, and about 50% more expensive to document. The comparison was done using parametric modeling techniques but the author claims that his tool has 7% accuracy. While I don't do Pascal myself, I wonder if the same would apply after they port C++ Builder to Linux and compare it to something like KDevelop + gcc."

Borland sponsored and is distributing this study -- take it for what you will. Interested parties can still produce useful studies, and may even be in the best position for collecting this sort of data. But whether Kylix matches your development environment or licensing philosophy is up to you.

Comments

No data = NOT A REAL STUDY

[ccoakley]

I think it telling that there was no actual data used in this report. The models were the parametric models presented by the costXpert tool. This whole study is nothing more than a statement that the people who make the project cost modelling software believe that Kylix would reduce your development cost by a factor of two. The article itself states that the tool has not been in the market long enough to obtain actual metric data.

In other words... we just released this tool. Nobody has used it enough to give us real figures, but this company, who also couldn't possibly have real figures (for the same reason), thinks that we'll save you a bundle.

Apples and oranges

[Pogue Mahone]

Comparing Kylix and gcc is like comparing (plucking some names out of the air) emacs and LaTeX for document creation. Both tools are used to help with the same job, but they do different things.

Furthermore, I suspect (from my experiences with Delphi in a previous life) that gcc will be much faster for certain types of applications. Like those with no GUI, for example. Horses for courses.