On Sun, 12 Nov 2000 16:17:02 Horst Herb wrote:
>> matter whether you can call C routines from Eiffel. Back to Joe Dal
>Molin's point, the issue is how easily awesome applications can be built by
>average or below average developers, i.e. how does the choice of Eiffel
>affect the "accessibility" of the software base.
>
>I am afraid that one of the _main_ reasons for the unstable bloatware we are
>suffering at present is exactly because below average developers have fancy
>tools to produce "impressive" bloatware.
Hmmm... At about 350k zipped for the entire OIO code, I wouldn't necessarily call it
bloatware. Maybe you can write it in assembly in
less than 35k, but you will probably spend more time writing it. The
point is that you will have a harder time enticing developers to work
on your 35k assembly version. Besides, if they can both fit on a floppy, what is the
big difference? :-)
>Can you really compare them? Zope is not a programming language, it is a
>"web application server". Different scopes alltogether.
Exactly! For developing web applications, perhaps Zope is a better tool.
...
>True, a little more effort than Zope,
>but much more flexible that way.
The issue always boils down to trade-offs. If I have trouble recruiting developers to
work on a project based on Zope, then you may
have even more trouble getting good help to code in assembly.
True, lower level tools are always more flexible, but productivity is also important.
...
>And, as the SmallEiffel (meta)compiler spits out either C or Java (!), you
>can simply do the rest in Java if library support is lacking in pure Eiffel.
Very cool. So many choices, it's so hard to decide what to make it spit out :-(. But
can it spit out web-pages and web-forms? :-)
I am not sure if you would agree with this but - with the advent of web browsers as
the "platform of choice", isn't it desirable to reduce the lines of code separating
the "submit" button from the next web-page to be presented? If so, why go through
Eiffel, C/Java, to get to rendering a web page?
Andrew
---
Andrew P. Ho, M.D.
OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes
www.TxOutcome.Org
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Psychiatry, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
University of California, Los Angeles
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