The reason the Microsoft platform is so over-priced is that it does not solve a business problem. It's generaal technology without an industry focus and business solution. I mean, it's like trying to sell aspirin for five times the price of everyone else. When aspirin was new, it made sense to price it high. Now it's just a commodity that no longer has patent protection. So it's cheap. In the case of software, the Windows platform is no longer the low-cost solution, which is the way it's always been marketed. When it paid for companies to host their own web-servers and apps, all the cool GUI tools meant something. Now that you can pay someone else to take care of this drudgery for a fraction of one or two in-house MS zealots can do it for, why do I care if some admin tasks require a command-line script?
www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The problem with the whole platform is cost. The primary end-result of the evolution of this commodity hardware is the fact that expensive software is now just obsolete - plain and simple. Ten years ago, there was a justified price premium associated with state of the art software algorithms. I still see these zealots for the DB companies raising these red-herring issues as to why every organization should still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive DB software. With the evolution of hardware the way it is, any credible SQL DB Engine could run almost any company. Same thing for web and application servers. How can anyone justify paying for these things when the hosting companies prove everyday for thousands of tech-savvy companies that the free solution is just as scalable and more secure. I used to maintain several Windwos servers and finally ported them to a hosted Apache solution - for about 5% of the cost. The sites are always available and the admin tools are web-based and better. And I don't have to hire these guys that want to go to the MS Marketing summit for a week every year so they can continue to administer the "low-cost MS solution approach". If you have any hesitation, make the switch. This stuff is now public domain, don't pay for this stuff. Those days are long gone. In the new model, it only makes sense to pay for software that solves industry-specific problems - not for tools that cost a fortune to maintain and invite tech companies into your business to meddle and start religous wars among the employees. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The primary end-result of the evolution of this commodity hardware is the fact that expensive software is now just obsolete - plain and simple. Ten years ago, there was a justified price premium associated with state of the art software algorithms. I still see these zealots for the DB companies raising these red-herring issues as to why every organization should still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive DB software. With the evolution of hardware the way it is, any credible SQL DB Engine could run almost any company. Same thing for web and application servers. How can anyone justify paying for these things when the hosting companies prove everyday for thousands of tech-savvy companies that the free solution is just as scalable and more secure. I used to maintain several Windwos servers and finally ported them to a hosted Apache solution - for about 5% of the cost. The sites are always available and the admin tools are web-based and better. And I don't have to hire these guys that want to go to the MS Marketing summit for a week every year so they can continue to administer the "low-cost MS solution approach". If you have any hesitation, make the switch. This stuff is now public domain, don't pay for this stuff. Those days are long gone. In the new model, it only makes sense to pay for software that solves industry-specific problems - not for tools that cost a fortune to maintain and invite tech companies into your business to meddle and start religous wars among the employees. www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The little known fact relating to offshore outsourcing is that the phenomena represents a huge windfall of profit to the platform vendors like Intel and MS. Even though the computers and OS's are not actually used to run alot of business over there, this second duplicate wave of purchasing has resulted in the equivalent of what happened here about a decade ago. Furthermore, the ass-backward code-intensive designs with a zero level of abstraction ensure the contracting companies here (the ones ordering the outsourced development) will be forced to purchase every single upgrade for the next five years. Totally worthless and impossible to maintain designs are great for business - if you sell OS's or hardware. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
This is actually true. I saw backup for this for the last few weeks in a row on Fox and CNBC business shows over and over during this period. Apparently, it's a factual talking point. And a good one at that. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
All the companies outsourcing development are totally backwards in their approach to design and are still operaing under archaic 1990's Object Oriented design assumptions. Back then, verbose source-code definitions were all that was possible. Higher levels of abstraction were simply not possible given the hardware. See full explanation of why offshore dev is ass-backwards at www.SoftwareObjectz.com. Of course, if your dev guys are charging you for OO it might make sense. But that is the equivalent of using a abacus for spreadsheet calculations.
Doug Hettinger
www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The notion that all software should be free is totally whacked out and stupid. Talented people don't do things for free. When they do, it's usually a marketing tactic - trying to establish a user-base or credibility within the industry segment. The concept of a large community enhancing the most core components of a widely used software system makes sense - but someone has to manage it. On the one hand, Linux is probably more rock-solid than Windows and the open-source developers probably do represent the top development talent in software (aside from industry-specific apps). I mean, this apology article tells the whole story as far as ability to deliver goes. However, on the other hand, the only way open source can work past totally horizontal focuses such as OS's and DB's is if the open-source people umderstand a for-profit organization is required to marrket and organize. Doug Hettinger softwareobjectz.com
This is probably just another classic example of what was once a lean young tech company morphing evolving into a large ineffficient corporate conglomerate that does very few things really well. Just like a football team that won 3 super bowls ten years ago, companies can easily evolve into something totally different from what they once were. Probbaly most of the tech geniuses cashed hteir options in and founded competitor or niche market companies. In the meantime, the bureaucrates have probably taken over and do what they do best - hiring based from a limited pool based on the things they know - Ivy league degrees and all the other things that real tech people know are not associated with success in technology innovation. softwareobjectz.com
This (the post that I'm replying to) is a really astute observation. It is often the case that a
proprietary and closed effort results in the creation of a really landmark product or process. As that product or service evolves and becomes more and more complex, it is simply naive to believe that a kind of corporate aristocracy can maintain an advantage over something as massive and truly merit-based as the open source movement. It appears as if most of the top youn talent in software enginnering is making its way to open-source and younger and leaner companies, where the is less of an aristocracy and political element. It seems to be a pretty universal phenomena in business - the larger and less focused (in terms of product scope) that a company becomes, the less competitive that company becomes. softwareobjectz.com
Microsoft's marketing team deserves a big fat Christmas, no holiday, bonus. What I'm most impressed with is how this string of security failures around retail versions of Windows (going back how many years) can be re-shaped as a team of scientis-like experts facing an impossible task and doing a great job. If this was any other field of business or eve pro sports, this many security breaches or failures in the core of the product line would have shaken things up for the better. Instead, the reaction is a clever marketing campaign to convince consumers the maker of the problematic and generally insecure product is a victim just like the consumer who is violated when all his or her credit card info or financial records are obtained with SpyWare.
The lesson to be learned is that if you spend enough money on marketing, any perception can become a reality. www.softwareobjectz.com
...to ensure the customer keeps upgrading from one version of the underlying platforms to the next version. The quiet fact is that most notable commercial software is not written against any framework but rather a compiled language such as C++. Frameworks are designed purely to enable the relatively unsophisticated and ensure upgrade and mainetenance revenue. Frameworks always result in additional harware being required. >>
...to ensure the customer keeps upgrading from one version of the underlying platforms to the next version. The quiet fact is that most notable commercial software is not written against any framework but rather a compiled language such as C++. Frameworks are designed purely to enable the relatively unsophisticated and ensure upgrade and mainetenance revenue. Frameworks always result in additional harware being required. >>
Core SQL DB functionality does save development dollars to the extent that alot of stuff can be more conveniently done on the server using SQL script. However, in this new model of outsourcing on a per business function basis, it simply does not make sense for companies to throw endless sums of money at DB strategeis that are predicated on the old model of an organization creating and maintaining all their own business functions' underlying systems. Alot of this expensive funcitonality is predicated on this out-of-date vision. Distributed transactions being the classic example. www.SoftwareObjectz.com
Distributed Transactions are one of the most over-hyped features of expensive DB's and used as a huge red-herring in most every DB evaluation process. Distributed Transactions were relevant and useful back in the day when an organization hosted all their own sytems and each one used a different platform. Given the advances in the global telecomm infrastructure, it simply does not make sense to host all your own business functions' underlying systems. Distributed transactions were relcvant before the wave of outsourcing each business function separately. Anytime I hear someone raise the Distributed Transactions red-herring, I know that organization probably has a bloated staff of IT Professors that are creating the perception that things are alot more difficult than they really are - or that person sells DB software. www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The fact that even small companies are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for a SQL database solution just serves to underscrore the disconnect between business managers and information technology divisions. Business managers actually believe they need to spend these large sums to ensure data security and integriy. More so than in any other area of IT purchasing, money spent on DB is totally out of synch with the real underlying cost-benefit equation. These prices were justified back in the days when hardware was primitive and expensive, making state of the art software algorithms worth an order of magnitude more valuable than they are today. With today's hardware, virtually any credible SQL Engine code-base would run the largest corporation. The prices are purely a product of marketing and a huge gap in understanding. wwww.SoftwareObjectz.com
...is lack of coherent marketing. Competitors are very careful to frame any discussion with technical details and stresing that there are many different versions. The key to selling Linux to people who make decisions is to take a step back and focus on the high-level. Explain just how cheap it is and just how rock-solid and secure it is. Don't let the MS advocate in the room bait you into a debate about the finer technical points. I've got a bunch of stuff at www.softwareobjectz.com that may help to frame the discussion better.
www.softwareobjectz.com
...in use within MS? Windows would be very compelling for universal usage if it didn't cost so much. The issue isn't whether it's solid (it's still the best desktop and the server is pretty full-featured), it's the relatively high cost. This is especially true when you have more than a small number of servers and/or desktops. I bet the retail value (or even the discounted corporate price valuation) of all the Windows licenses being used would be mind-boggling.
Outsourcing Development & Programming - Driver
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Offshoring IT
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*** Virtually every outsourced development effort I've encountered in the field reflected a decade-old design. Of the dozens of offshore-produced code-bases I've seen in large corporations, virtually every one relied on highly labor intensive patterns that could have been generated very simply, given an understanding of the situation. And since the modules/programs were not generated, but instead written slightly different by many different resources, they are virtually impossible to maintain subsequent to the original writing. In this world of never-ending compliance, this is a recipe for disaster. To be fair, this is not limited to offshore shops. I've personally known of many big-budget projects where high-dollar domestic consultants (from a variety of shops) delivered systems that relied on per-form, or per-query source code representations (unnecessary programs - in manager-speak). *** The very important fact is that there is greater variability in the software developer productivity than any other service sector. A Failure to understand this reality is the primary driver of offshore development. *** Just as object-Oriented software was the buzz of the past, when computer hardware was less advanced, Engine-Oriented software is the solution for today - not mechanical and unwieldy offshore developed systems. Outsourced developed efforts that are predicated on the low variable, or resource-level, cost model make no sense as the economics of system development are more fixed-cost in nature. Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
The Real Drivers of Outsourcing of Software Dev
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The Real Drivers of Outsourcing of Software Development...
*** While I have not read the book referenced in this thread, I do have some opinions on the topic of outsourcing of software development. Most of these opinions follow from the belief that a significant percentage of outsourcing results due to a disconnect between budget-controlling managers and technical services providers. Financial managers, including those tasked with selecting technical service providers such as software development, typically have the responsibility to award contracts to a low-cost provider of a product of sufficient quality. Before the age of computers and software, this was a relatively straightforward process. There were fewer complexities associated with production processes associated with manufacturing and more traditional services such as accounting, engineering and legal. Before the age of computers and the web, there was far less variability in the productivity of individual resources within a given category of service provider. For example, before spreadsheet software, an accountant could only process a limited number of transactions, or research a small sub-set of the Internal Revenue code. A financial wiz was bounded by the time it took mechanically calculate the potential profits of a given arbitrage or hedge strategy. A lawyer could only look up so many similar precedent cases in legal publications. In short, procurement managers faced limited risk in their investigation of the abilities of potential service providers. However, within a couple short decades, this has all changed.
*** With the advent of personal computers and software applications, there is a significantly larger variance in individual resource productivity within every category of knowledge services. An accountant or financial manager with strong spreadsheet skills and only limited programming expertise can be exponentially more productive than a similarly educated, less computer-enabled peer. A lawyer who still relies on a physical library of printed legal publications would very plausibly be five percent as productive as a similarly educated attorney who had mastered a personal computing environment and had a grasp of the taxonomical classifications employed by the online legal publishers. So, mastery of technology has dramatically increased the variability in the productivity of knowledge service providers.
*** Naturally, the same concepts that drive the increased variability in resource productivity in traditional knowledge services such as accounting, law and non-computer engineering are responsible for the even greater variability in productivity in software development services. It is quite common, in the field of software development, for a single expert developer/consultant to produce more than a team of a dozen or more in-house developers. This is especially true when a development team has locked itself into an "every Xxxx object is written using this pattern approach". Situation and approaches like this serve to cap the productivity of the individual resources.
*** This background serves to highlight and underscore the disconnect referenced above (between procurement managers and technical service providers) in the context of offshore outsourcing. Almost without exception, outsourced development efforts are predicated upon the belief, by procurement personnel and management, that there is little variability in the productivity of individual service providing resources. It is difficult for an MBA-style manager to believe that using a slightly dated approach to design, as is usually the case in offshore outsourced systems, can result in the purchasing company taking ownership of a code-base that is dozens of times larger (in terms of source code volume) than a more modern design approach. But it is almost universally true.
*** Virtually every outsourced development effort I've encountered in the field reflected a decade-old design. Of the dozens of offshore-produced code-bases I've seen in large corporations, virtuall
Nefarious implies criminality or wickedness (per Meriam Webster). It is not crminial or even wicked for a vendor to try to keep customers closey coupled or bound to the vendor's direction and vision. However, this is a widely recognized issue. I just stated it too succinctly for the comfort of some readers. It is perfectly valid for customers to worry about future support for a major aspect of an OS platform.
To repeat, I like the product and develop using it many hours per day - every day - more than I should admit.
I personally know many fine individuals and excellent technical talent working for MS. Competitive Strategy, however, is dictated by senior management - not technical staff.
Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
They had to hire Herb Sutter since their compiler support had fallen so far behind others and key customers probably raised hell that they would not recognize the new savior C# and VB.Net. I like the IDE and the organization, but the compiler has always been behind others and most shops use many other vendors' higher performance libraries. The fact is, C# has not taken off according to plans.
Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
...is that unmanaged C++ is still the only access route to the scalable aspects of most of the underlying platform services such as TCP/IP stacks, Web Server etc. Support for TCP/IP within.Net is very limited - confined to client-app mechanisms but nothing for scalable server-side development. Same story for anything but plain-vanilla web development. The second I had to use a x.509 certificate from a bank for a program I was writing, had to go to the WinHTTP SDK, which is denominated in C. VB.Net and C# are great for the fill-in-the-blanks style coding that some simpler tasks necessitate, but C++ is still an absolute requirement for the vast majority of enterprise endeavors.
MS still achieves all its benchmarks using VC++ - they don't even use their own.Net languages when they need respectable numbers.
Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
I agree, it is a pretty decent tool - in terms of language suport and ease of use. I do think the code generated is often sub-par though (see other member posts on this thread). But, having said that, once Linux gets a dev environment this convenient to use, I will be a daily user of it as well.
Doug Hettinger
MS Absolutely Despises C++
While I do believe the MS Visual C++ product is a very convenient form of C++, and I've been a daily user for the last ten years, it would be a simple case of cheerleading to believe that MS management has any desire to continue this product. If it were not for the ABSOLUTE DEMANDS of keepers of huge C++ source code bases such as ISV's (those who produce software for resale) and some of the more tech-savvy Fortune 500 customers (those wishing to preserve the option to vacate the MS platform in the event of some unforeseen future innovation - such as an equally suitable and maybe even free OS J ), MS management would have scrapped C++ as a product offering the day that Visual Basic 6 shipped. Bring in the MS consultants or top partners and they will tell you it will bankrupt your organization if you try to use it.
Consider these facts:
* Proprietary languages are key to ensuring customers don't skip upgrades from one version of Windows to another. MS will always concoct a plausible new marketing line to justify why unwitting customer companies should switch from one language to another - with the new version being completely incompatible with any viable competitive platform.
* All MS products are written using C++.
* Dropping external support for C++ and enforcing.Net as the only development environment for Windows lets MS move in on more and more new industry-specific markets- or at least choose the players who succeed - in vertically focused (sector or industry-focused) markets.
* Proprietary development environments are CRITICAL to getting Platform/OS customers to pay for every version upgrade. Without Proprietary Development Environments, customers would leapfrog one or more version upgrades.
* For a Real-World Example: If you wrote a data access layer/sub-system against the ODBC C-API ten years ago and it would compile today and still perform better than the most optimally designed.Net data access sub-system. I know this first-hand from experience. On the flip-side, if you chose the MS language du-jour, you would have been forced to re-write your data access layer at least four times - in the same time period.
So, the moral of the story is:
KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON CODING IN C++!!! STILL THE FASTEST, STILL THE MOST PORTABLE, AND STILL THE LOWEST COST - OVER A PERIOD OF THREE YEARS OR MORE!!!
Slashdot Mirror
The reason the Microsoft platform is so over-priced is that it does not solve a business problem. It's generaal technology without an industry focus and business solution. I mean, it's like trying to sell aspirin for five times the price of everyone else. When aspirin was new, it made sense to price it high. Now it's just a commodity that no longer has patent protection. So it's cheap. In the case of software, the Windows platform is no longer the low-cost solution, which is the way it's always been marketed. When it paid for companies to host their own web-servers and apps, all the cool GUI tools meant something. Now that you can pay someone else to take care of this drudgery for a fraction of one or two in-house MS zealots can do it for, why do I care if some admin tasks require a command-line script? www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The problem with the whole platform is cost. The primary end-result of the evolution of this commodity hardware is the fact that expensive software is now just obsolete - plain and simple. Ten years ago, there was a justified price premium associated with state of the art software algorithms. I still see these zealots for the DB companies raising these red-herring issues as to why every organization should still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive DB software. With the evolution of hardware the way it is, any credible SQL DB Engine could run almost any company. Same thing for web and application servers. How can anyone justify paying for these things when the hosting companies prove everyday for thousands of tech-savvy companies that the free solution is just as scalable and more secure. I used to maintain several Windwos servers and finally ported them to a hosted Apache solution - for about 5% of the cost. The sites are always available and the admin tools are web-based and better. And I don't have to hire these guys that want to go to the MS Marketing summit for a week every year so they can continue to administer the "low-cost MS solution approach". If you have any hesitation, make the switch. This stuff is now public domain, don't pay for this stuff. Those days are long gone. In the new model, it only makes sense to pay for software that solves industry-specific problems - not for tools that cost a fortune to maintain and invite tech companies into your business to meddle and start religous wars among the employees. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The primary end-result of the evolution of this commodity hardware is the fact that expensive software is now just obsolete - plain and simple. Ten years ago, there was a justified price premium associated with state of the art software algorithms. I still see these zealots for the DB companies raising these red-herring issues as to why every organization should still spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive DB software. With the evolution of hardware the way it is, any credible SQL DB Engine could run almost any company. Same thing for web and application servers. How can anyone justify paying for these things when the hosting companies prove everyday for thousands of tech-savvy companies that the free solution is just as scalable and more secure. I used to maintain several Windwos servers and finally ported them to a hosted Apache solution - for about 5% of the cost. The sites are always available and the admin tools are web-based and better. And I don't have to hire these guys that want to go to the MS Marketing summit for a week every year so they can continue to administer the "low-cost MS solution approach". If you have any hesitation, make the switch. This stuff is now public domain, don't pay for this stuff. Those days are long gone. In the new model, it only makes sense to pay for software that solves industry-specific problems - not for tools that cost a fortune to maintain and invite tech companies into your business to meddle and start religous wars among the employees. www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The little known fact relating to offshore outsourcing is that the phenomena represents a huge windfall of profit to the platform vendors like Intel and MS. Even though the computers and OS's are not actually used to run alot of business over there, this second duplicate wave of purchasing has resulted in the equivalent of what happened here about a decade ago. Furthermore, the ass-backward code-intensive designs with a zero level of abstraction ensure the contracting companies here (the ones ordering the outsourced development) will be forced to purchase every single upgrade for the next five years. Totally worthless and impossible to maintain designs are great for business - if you sell OS's or hardware. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
This is actually true. I saw backup for this for the last few weeks in a row on Fox and CNBC business shows over and over during this period. Apparently, it's a factual talking point. And a good one at that. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
All the companies outsourcing development are totally backwards in their approach to design and are still operaing under archaic 1990's Object Oriented design assumptions. Back then, verbose source-code definitions were all that was possible. Higher levels of abstraction were simply not possible given the hardware. See full explanation of why offshore dev is ass-backwards at www.SoftwareObjectz.com. Of course, if your dev guys are charging you for OO it might make sense. But that is the equivalent of using a abacus for spreadsheet calculations. Doug Hettinger www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The notion that all software should be free is totally whacked out and stupid. Talented people don't do things for free. When they do, it's usually a marketing tactic - trying to establish a user-base or credibility within the industry segment. The concept of a large community enhancing the most core components of a widely used software system makes sense - but someone has to manage it. On the one hand, Linux is probably more rock-solid than Windows and the open-source developers probably do represent the top development talent in software (aside from industry-specific apps). I mean, this apology article tells the whole story as far as ability to deliver goes. However, on the other hand, the only way open source can work past totally horizontal focuses such as OS's and DB's is if the open-source people umderstand a for-profit organization is required to marrket and organize. Doug Hettinger softwareobjectz.com
This is probably just another classic example of what was once a lean young tech company morphing evolving into a large ineffficient corporate conglomerate that does very few things really well. Just like a football team that won 3 super bowls ten years ago, companies can easily evolve into something totally different from what they once were. Probbaly most of the tech geniuses cashed hteir options in and founded competitor or niche market companies. In the meantime, the bureaucrates have probably taken over and do what they do best - hiring based from a limited pool based on the things they know - Ivy league degrees and all the other things that real tech people know are not associated with success in technology innovation. softwareobjectz.com
This (the post that I'm replying to) is a really astute observation. It is often the case that a proprietary and closed effort results in the creation of a really landmark product or process. As that product or service evolves and becomes more and more complex, it is simply naive to believe that a kind of corporate aristocracy can maintain an advantage over something as massive and truly merit-based as the open source movement. It appears as if most of the top youn talent in software enginnering is making its way to open-source and younger and leaner companies, where the is less of an aristocracy and political element. It seems to be a pretty universal phenomena in business - the larger and less focused (in terms of product scope) that a company becomes, the less competitive that company becomes. softwareobjectz.com
Microsoft's marketing team deserves a big fat Christmas, no holiday, bonus. What I'm most impressed with is how this string of security failures around retail versions of Windows (going back how many years) can be re-shaped as a team of scientis-like experts facing an impossible task and doing a great job. If this was any other field of business or eve pro sports, this many security breaches or failures in the core of the product line would have shaken things up for the better. Instead, the reaction is a clever marketing campaign to convince consumers the maker of the problematic and generally insecure product is a victim just like the consumer who is violated when all his or her credit card info or financial records are obtained with SpyWare. The lesson to be learned is that if you spend enough money on marketing, any perception can become a reality. www.softwareobjectz.com
...to ensure the customer keeps upgrading from one version of the underlying platforms to the next version. The quiet fact is that most notable commercial software is not written against any framework but rather a compiled language such as C++. Frameworks are designed purely to enable the relatively unsophisticated and ensure upgrade and mainetenance revenue. Frameworks always result in additional harware being required. >>
...to ensure the customer keeps upgrading from one version of the underlying platforms to the next version. The quiet fact is that most notable commercial software is not written against any framework but rather a compiled language such as C++. Frameworks are designed purely to enable the relatively unsophisticated and ensure upgrade and mainetenance revenue. Frameworks always result in additional harware being required. >>
Core SQL DB functionality does save development dollars to the extent that alot of stuff can be more conveniently done on the server using SQL script. However, in this new model of outsourcing on a per business function basis, it simply does not make sense for companies to throw endless sums of money at DB strategeis that are predicated on the old model of an organization creating and maintaining all their own business functions' underlying systems. Alot of this expensive funcitonality is predicated on this out-of-date vision. Distributed transactions being the classic example. www.SoftwareObjectz.com
Distributed Transactions are one of the most over-hyped features of expensive DB's and used as a huge red-herring in most every DB evaluation process. Distributed Transactions were relevant and useful back in the day when an organization hosted all their own sytems and each one used a different platform. Given the advances in the global telecomm infrastructure, it simply does not make sense to host all your own business functions' underlying systems. Distributed transactions were relcvant before the wave of outsourcing each business function separately. Anytime I hear someone raise the Distributed Transactions red-herring, I know that organization probably has a bloated staff of IT Professors that are creating the perception that things are alot more difficult than they really are - or that person sells DB software. www.SoftwareObjectz.com
The fact that even small companies are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for a SQL database solution just serves to underscrore the disconnect between business managers and information technology divisions. Business managers actually believe they need to spend these large sums to ensure data security and integriy. More so than in any other area of IT purchasing, money spent on DB is totally out of synch with the real underlying cost-benefit equation. These prices were justified back in the days when hardware was primitive and expensive, making state of the art software algorithms worth an order of magnitude more valuable than they are today. With today's hardware, virtually any credible SQL Engine code-base would run the largest corporation. The prices are purely a product of marketing and a huge gap in understanding. wwww.SoftwareObjectz.com
...is lack of coherent marketing. Competitors are very careful to frame any discussion with technical details and stresing that there are many different versions. The key to selling Linux to people who make decisions is to take a step back and focus on the high-level. Explain just how cheap it is and just how rock-solid and secure it is. Don't let the MS advocate in the room bait you into a debate about the finer technical points. I've got a bunch of stuff at www.softwareobjectz.com that may help to frame the discussion better. www.softwareobjectz.com
...in use within MS? Windows would be very compelling for universal usage if it didn't cost so much. The issue isn't whether it's solid (it's still the best desktop and the server is pretty full-featured), it's the relatively high cost. This is especially true when you have more than a small number of servers and/or desktops. I bet the retail value (or even the discounted corporate price valuation) of all the Windows licenses being used would be mind-boggling.
*** Virtually every outsourced development effort I've encountered in the field reflected a decade-old design. Of the dozens of offshore-produced code-bases I've seen in large corporations, virtually every one relied on highly labor intensive patterns that could have been generated very simply, given an understanding of the situation. And since the modules/programs were not generated, but instead written slightly different by many different resources, they are virtually impossible to maintain subsequent to the original writing. In this world of never-ending compliance, this is a recipe for disaster. To be fair, this is not limited to offshore shops. I've personally known of many big-budget projects where high-dollar domestic consultants (from a variety of shops) delivered systems that relied on per-form, or per-query source code representations (unnecessary programs - in manager-speak). *** The very important fact is that there is greater variability in the software developer productivity than any other service sector. A Failure to understand this reality is the primary driver of offshore development. *** Just as object-Oriented software was the buzz of the past, when computer hardware was less advanced, Engine-Oriented software is the solution for today - not mechanical and unwieldy offshore developed systems. Outsourced developed efforts that are predicated on the low variable, or resource-level, cost model make no sense as the economics of system development are more fixed-cost in nature. Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
The Real Drivers of Outsourcing of Software Development... *** While I have not read the book referenced in this thread, I do have some opinions on the topic of outsourcing of software development. Most of these opinions follow from the belief that a significant percentage of outsourcing results due to a disconnect between budget-controlling managers and technical services providers. Financial managers, including those tasked with selecting technical service providers such as software development, typically have the responsibility to award contracts to a low-cost provider of a product of sufficient quality. Before the age of computers and software, this was a relatively straightforward process. There were fewer complexities associated with production processes associated with manufacturing and more traditional services such as accounting, engineering and legal. Before the age of computers and the web, there was far less variability in the productivity of individual resources within a given category of service provider. For example, before spreadsheet software, an accountant could only process a limited number of transactions, or research a small sub-set of the Internal Revenue code. A financial wiz was bounded by the time it took mechanically calculate the potential profits of a given arbitrage or hedge strategy. A lawyer could only look up so many similar precedent cases in legal publications. In short, procurement managers faced limited risk in their investigation of the abilities of potential service providers. However, within a couple short decades, this has all changed. *** With the advent of personal computers and software applications, there is a significantly larger variance in individual resource productivity within every category of knowledge services. An accountant or financial manager with strong spreadsheet skills and only limited programming expertise can be exponentially more productive than a similarly educated, less computer-enabled peer. A lawyer who still relies on a physical library of printed legal publications would very plausibly be five percent as productive as a similarly educated attorney who had mastered a personal computing environment and had a grasp of the taxonomical classifications employed by the online legal publishers. So, mastery of technology has dramatically increased the variability in the productivity of knowledge service providers. *** Naturally, the same concepts that drive the increased variability in resource productivity in traditional knowledge services such as accounting, law and non-computer engineering are responsible for the even greater variability in productivity in software development services. It is quite common, in the field of software development, for a single expert developer/consultant to produce more than a team of a dozen or more in-house developers. This is especially true when a development team has locked itself into an "every Xxxx object is written using this pattern approach". Situation and approaches like this serve to cap the productivity of the individual resources. *** This background serves to highlight and underscore the disconnect referenced above (between procurement managers and technical service providers) in the context of offshore outsourcing. Almost without exception, outsourced development efforts are predicated upon the belief, by procurement personnel and management, that there is little variability in the productivity of individual service providing resources. It is difficult for an MBA-style manager to believe that using a slightly dated approach to design, as is usually the case in offshore outsourced systems, can result in the purchasing company taking ownership of a code-base that is dozens of times larger (in terms of source code volume) than a more modern design approach. But it is almost universally true. *** Virtually every outsourced development effort I've encountered in the field reflected a decade-old design. Of the dozens of offshore-produced code-bases I've seen in large corporations, virtuall
Nefarious implies criminality or wickedness (per Meriam Webster). It is not crminial or even wicked for a vendor to try to keep customers closey coupled or bound to the vendor's direction and vision. However, this is a widely recognized issue. I just stated it too succinctly for the comfort of some readers. It is perfectly valid for customers to worry about future support for a major aspect of an OS platform. To repeat, I like the product and develop using it many hours per day - every day - more than I should admit. I personally know many fine individuals and excellent technical talent working for MS. Competitive Strategy, however, is dictated by senior management - not technical staff. Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
They had to hire Herb Sutter since their compiler support had fallen so far behind others and key customers probably raised hell that they would not recognize the new savior C# and VB.Net. I like the IDE and the organization, but the compiler has always been behind others and most shops use many other vendors' higher performance libraries. The fact is, C# has not taken off according to plans. Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
Well said. Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
...is that unmanaged C++ is still the only access route to the scalable aspects of most of the underlying platform services such as TCP/IP stacks, Web Server etc. Support for TCP/IP within .Net is very limited - confined to client-app mechanisms but nothing for scalable server-side development. Same story for anything but plain-vanilla web development. The second I had to use a x.509 certificate from a bank for a program I was writing, had to go to the WinHTTP SDK, which is denominated in C. VB.Net and C# are great for the fill-in-the-blanks style coding that some simpler tasks necessitate, but C++ is still an absolute requirement for the vast majority of enterprise endeavors.
MS still achieves all its benchmarks using VC++ - they don't even use their own .Net languages when they need respectable numbers.
Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)
I agree, it is a pretty decent tool - in terms of language suport and ease of use. I do think the code generated is often sub-par though (see other member posts on this thread). But, having said that, once Linux gets a dev environment this convenient to use, I will be a daily user of it as well. Doug Hettinger
MS Absolutely Despises C++ While I do believe the MS Visual C++ product is a very convenient form of C++, and I've been a daily user for the last ten years, it would be a simple case of cheerleading to believe that MS management has any desire to continue this product. If it were not for the ABSOLUTE DEMANDS of keepers of huge C++ source code bases such as ISV's (those who produce software for resale) and some of the more tech-savvy Fortune 500 customers (those wishing to preserve the option to vacate the MS platform in the event of some unforeseen future innovation - such as an equally suitable and maybe even free OS J ), MS management would have scrapped C++ as a product offering the day that Visual Basic 6 shipped. Bring in the MS consultants or top partners and they will tell you it will bankrupt your organization if you try to use it. Consider these facts: * Proprietary languages are key to ensuring customers don't skip upgrades from one version of Windows to another. MS will always concoct a plausible new marketing line to justify why unwitting customer companies should switch from one language to another - with the new version being completely incompatible with any viable competitive platform. * All MS products are written using C++. * Dropping external support for C++ and enforcing .Net as the only development environment for Windows lets MS move in on more and more new industry-specific markets- or at least choose the players who succeed - in vertically focused (sector or industry-focused) markets.
* Proprietary development environments are CRITICAL to getting Platform/OS customers to pay for every version upgrade. Without Proprietary Development Environments, customers would leapfrog one or more version upgrades.
* For a Real-World Example: If you wrote a data access layer/sub-system against the ODBC C-API ten years ago and it would compile today and still perform better than the most optimally designed .Net data access sub-system. I know this first-hand from experience. On the flip-side, if you chose the MS language du-jour, you would have been forced to re-write your data access layer at least four times - in the same time period.
So, the moral of the story is:
KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON CODING IN C++!!! STILL THE FASTEST, STILL THE MOST PORTABLE, AND STILL THE LOWEST COST - OVER A PERIOD OF THREE YEARS OR MORE!!!