There are many sides to the issue of standardizing on a language, and not always technical. It depends on the nature of the companies business, number of IT employees, and the type of software developed.
On the Pro side:
1. In a small company developing in-house software standardizing can help save employee cost because you don't have to find someone who is skilled in all the languages or have a person for each language. And, everyone can share the work load.
2. Greater skill and efficiency can be developed focusing on one language.
3. Licensing costs are lower with fewer development tools.
On the Con Side:
1. It's too late!! There would be a cost to convert existing software to the new standard that is otherwise an unnecessary cost with little business value. If you don't convert the old stuff, then you haven't standardized and won't reap the benefits.
2.You won't be using the best (or better) tool for the task. That can make some projects difficult and needlessly expensive. (write a C# program to copy files?). A hammer doesn't really fix everything. The screw driver analogy is apt.
3. When the standard tool is not the current trend (think COBOL), you'll either have to rewrite everything, become nonstandardized, or be stuck with code few people want to maintain.
4. Much like 3, you won't be able to take advantage of new technology to meet next months needs. 18 months and everything is going to be different.
Slashdot Mirror
There are many sides to the issue of standardizing on a language, and not always technical. It depends on the nature of the companies business, number of IT employees, and the type of software developed. On the Pro side: 1. In a small company developing in-house software standardizing can help save employee cost because you don't have to find someone who is skilled in all the languages or have a person for each language. And, everyone can share the work load. 2. Greater skill and efficiency can be developed focusing on one language. 3. Licensing costs are lower with fewer development tools. On the Con Side: 1. It's too late!! There would be a cost to convert existing software to the new standard that is otherwise an unnecessary cost with little business value. If you don't convert the old stuff, then you haven't standardized and won't reap the benefits. 2.You won't be using the best (or better) tool for the task. That can make some projects difficult and needlessly expensive. (write a C# program to copy files?). A hammer doesn't really fix everything. The screw driver analogy is apt. 3. When the standard tool is not the current trend (think COBOL), you'll either have to rewrite everything, become nonstandardized, or be stuck with code few people want to maintain. 4. Much like 3, you won't be able to take advantage of new technology to meet next months needs. 18 months and everything is going to be different.