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Competitive Cross-Platform Development?

Posted by Cliff on from the keeping-up-without-losing-compatibility dept.

Avalonia asks: "I work for a software company in the oil and gas exploration industry with a software development team of seven. Our software and development environment is cross-platform on Solaris, Irix, Linux and Windows. Most of our customers are on Solaris and Irix 64-bit systems, but Linux and Windows are increasingly important. Our environment is based around an elaborate command-line system of Makefiles controlling four different compilers (gcc 3.1, Sun Forte, Irix MIPSpro and Visual C++ 7). Needless to say, maintaining this system and producing modern multi-threaded C++ that will go through the four build systems is time-consuming in the extreme. A large proportion of our time is spent finding C++ code that just works rather than being creative and competitive with new functionality. What tools and strategies can we use to increase our productivity and regain our competitive advantage, without going for Windows only?"

"Our recent single-platform competitors (Windows only) can seriously outrun us in terms of productivity by using a single modern IDE development environment - such as C++ builder or Visual Studio - although we can scale onto larger multiprocessor Unix systems. With Windows 64-bit imminent we may lose our 'big-iron' scalability advantage. Java is not currently an option for the high-performance numerical and immersive graphical aspect of our applications."

8 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Might I suggest... by SirSlud · · Score: 2, Funny

    LOL! Well, you didn't suggest Javascript, so I guess that counts for something.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  2. ...write portable code? by jukal · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...uhm...ahmmm...mmm. Dunno what to add.

  3. JAVA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny


    Java. Java, more Java.

    www.sun.com

    Java

  4. Re:Different platforms.. different people by mxmissile · · Score: 2, Funny

    Read this.

  5. It's very simple. by eddy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just add more people to your team! Double! Tripple! GO WILD WITH NEW RECRUITS!

    Sheeesh, some people never learn...

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  6. Java is *so* hard! by fishdan · · Score: 2, Funny

    Java is not currently an option for the high-performance numerical and immersive graphical aspect of our applications. Read: "We don't want to learn Java" No Java programmer who read that believes you. The answer is that what you can learn to do in Java in 5 DAYS won't be fast enough, but if you're willing to either hire a good contractor (for gods sake ask to SEE something he's built though), or take 8 weeks or so to get GOOD, you can EASILY do this in Java...Unless of course you are doing special effects for ILM, in which case I humbly apologize, and I've got some questions about the next movie.

    --
    Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
    1. Re:Java is *so* hard! by DanielDittmar · · Score: 2, Funny

      No Java programmer who read that believes you.

      Why not? They seem pretty gullible otherwise.

  7. Re:I'd be interested in knowning... by tpv · · Score: 2, Funny

    80% of your non-performance critical code in Java, and the later 10& in C/C++
    And throw the remaining 10% out?

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