Re: VA?

[Paul Makepeace]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 01:24:57PM +, Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
> Anyone have an opinion on VA?

Fairly solid feeling, and the company support is excellent -- I needed a
PCI riser card for a 501 box and they basically shipped me one for free
even though the machine is two years old & discontinued.

Paul

Re: Testing .. but not as I know it

[Robin Szemeti]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, you wrote:

> > to wit, testing of object based modules. Firstly what do people generally
> > use for this? Test::Unit ?? or is there something more freindly out
> > there?
> 
> Test::Unit *almost* does the right thing, but looking through the code
> there are some horrible things being done (by someone who doesn't seem
> to understand the reflection/introspection and dynamic features of
> Perl),

they didn't even understand 'use strict;' so I expect there are other
gaps too

since it does *almost* the right thing and I *almost* know what I'm doing
with it .. I'll hang with it then for now.
   
> and the test suite it comes with doesn't seem to have
> desperately good coverage of the various testing modules. Which is why
> I'm working on it...

uh huh .. I noticed various bits of the Tk gui were a little err 'sub
obtimal' :) ... 

lerrus know when you get it nailed down then.

> > secondly abstraction:
> > 
> > If I have , say a 'data' object 
> 
> Why does the data object have to know how/if it's stored? Have a data
> librarian object which is responsible for handling moving objects into
> and out of storage. Then test the librarian to make sure that it can
> retrieve stuff in the appropriate fashion, and do your data object
> unit testing (possibly) without even having the librarian loaded up.
> If you *do* find that you need to have the librarian loaded for some
> of the data object's methods to work, think hard and see if you can't
> find some way of removing that dependency. 

uh huh ... sorta got that ... so basically anything with anything that
looks like sql or a $dbh handle ends up in the Librarian .. the outer
class has all the other stuff  I aint sure about the 'without even
having the librarian loaded' bit .. surely you test the librarian and
then test the outer class with the librarian loaded iff the librarian
passes its tests? .. otherwise you end up having to write a dummy
librarian class that has every chance of not correctly behaving as the
real librarian .. or do you just run the librarian tests on the dummy
class as well?/ ... I though the idea was to build from ground zero, and
include tested base classes into higher order classes and then test them
as you go along .. or is that not it? ... 

> The difference between a Unit test and an Acceptance test is that the
> unit test tries its damndest to test the behaviour of the class and
> its methods etc independently of everything else in the system.
> An Acceptance test then tests that the entire system behaves as it
> should for a given task.

oh right .. thats a bit clearer ... so what do you do when a class works
with its dummy stubs but fails when a sub-class is plugged in instead? in
the latter model that would not get picked up until the acceptance test
... and then it might be difficult to see exactly where it went worng... 

hmm the trick seems to be not so much in the semantics of perl (the whole
OO thing of method dispatch and inheritance is fairly straightforward
really now I get to grips with it ) its mainly down to the design and
subtlties of which bits go in where ... 

ho hum .. back to the codeface.

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: VA?

[Robin Szemeti]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, you wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Struan Donald wrote:
> >
> > *and* they have blue LEDs :)
> >
>
> ( find blue LEDs on http://rswww.com/ if you dont believe me)
> 

I seldom order from spammers.

try http://www.farnell.com

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: VA?

[Struan Donald]

* at 13/02 17:07 + Jonathan Stowe said:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Struan Donald wrote:
> >
> > *and* they have blue LEDs :)
> >
> 
> Well that doubles the price for starters :)

ah, but everyone loves blue LEDs
 
struan

Re: VA?

[Jonathan Stowe]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Struan Donald wrote:
>
> *and* they have blue LEDs :)
>

Well that doubles the price for starters :)

( find blue LEDs on http://rswww.com/ if you dont believe me)

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe   |
http://www.gellyfish.com |   I'm with Grep on this one
http://www.tackleway.co.uk   |

Re: VA?

[Greg McCarroll]

* Dave Hodgkinson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Chris Devers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > At 01:24 PM 13.2.2001 +, you wrote:
> > >Anyone have an opinion on VA?
> > 
> > Virginia's nice but I like Massachusetts better. Too close to both
> > AOL ground zero & American political hell ground zero
> 
> Thpbpfpfpfpfft!
> 
> Ok, so VA aren't evil incarnate. Anyone want to work with 'em? They're
> looking for a general purpose Linux gofer to do pre-sales stuff. 
> 
> And Reading Room are still looking for a network/web/sysadmin wookie
> since the best candidate so far decided to stay put...he knows who he
> is...

wookie = big hairy loud 

shurely there is an abundance of london mongers who fit this role



-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: VA?

[Dave Hodgkinson]

Chris Devers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> At 01:24 PM 13.2.2001 +, you wrote:
> >Anyone have an opinion on VA?
> 
> Virginia's nice but I like Massachusetts better. Too close to both
> AOL ground zero & American political hell ground zero

Thpbpfpfpfpfft!

Ok, so VA aren't evil incarnate. Anyone want to work with 'em? They're
looking for a general purpose Linux gofer to do pre-sales stuff. 

And Reading Room are still looking for a network/web/sysadmin wookie
since the best candidate so far decided to stay put...he knows who he
is...


-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
  -

RE: VA?

[Mike Jarvis]

Chris Devers wrote:
> At 01:24 PM 13.2.2001 +, you wrote:
> >Anyone have an opinion on VA?
>
> Virginia's nice but I like Massachusetts better. Too close to
> both AOL ground zero & American political hell ground zero

Both of which I've worked in. :)

On topic, last place I worked we had one VA server and hordes of NT boxes.
I consistantly got more done on the VA box than teams of people did on the
NT boxes.  And I didn't have to reboot mine every night. But that's just
linux.

Yes, I liked VA.  The box was nice and they were easy to deal with.

Since I left that company, they've dumped all of their unix systems and
replaced them with NT.  And they only hire H1B programmers so they can't
leave.

--
mike

Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[Chris Devers]

At 11:00 AM 13.2.2001 +, Steve Purkis wrote:
>Mike Jarvis wrote:
>> 
>> David H. Adler wrote:
>> > On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 04:32:08PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote:
>> > >
>> > > When looking at cost, remember what hotel rates in NYC are like
>> > > (almost as bad as London).  You can easily pay US$250/night for
>> > > a room that you would swear is in a crack house.
>> >
>> > But the crack is *great*!
>> 
>> Rooms actually in a crack house will be significantly more expensive.
>
>Depends - sometimes they don't charge you at all!
>(if you're selling alot of crack, say)
>
>It's the whorehouses that are always expensive.

Depends - sometimes they don't charge you at all!
(if you're selling, uh, nevermind...)



--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
webmaster work: 781.270.5372
Skillcheckcell: 617.365.0585

Re: VA?

[Chris Devers]

At 01:24 PM 13.2.2001 +, you wrote:
>Anyone have an opinion on VA?

Virginia's nice but I like Massachusetts better. Too close to both AOL ground zero & 
American political hell ground zero

;)




--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
webmaster work: 781.270.5372
Skillcheckcell: 617.365.0585

Re: Testing .. but not as I know it

[Piers Cawley]

Robin Szemeti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Rightio ...
> 
> since its a Tuesday and also a waning 3/4 moon its *New Methodology Day*
> and the random choice from Big Ted's bookcase was XP::Installed
> 
> to wit, testing of object based modules. Firstly what do people generally
> use for this? Test::Unit ?? or is there something more freindly out
> there?

Test::Unit *almost* does the right thing, but looking through the code
there are some horrible things being done (by someone who doesn't seem
to understand the reflection/introspection and dynamic features of
Perl), and the test suite it comes with doesn't seem to have
desperately good coverage of the various testing modules. Which is why
I'm working on it...

> secondly abstraction:
> 
> If I have , say a 'data' object that can store, retreive and list various
> data in a schema, good OO practice would suggest that I test the object
> without knowing whether it stores its data in a flatfile, a databse or
> DNA structure, what is important is that it can store, retreive and list
> the info ... but obviously I have to tell it to use (in this case) a test
> MySQL db to load and retreive info from .. which seems contradictory ..
> or is that the difference between unit tests and acceptance tests ...
> unit tests are allowed to test specific variants of modules (flatfile
> based, MySQL based etc) where as the acceptance tests just work with
> whatever module is loaded and treat it as a black box ...???
> 
> am I making any sense ? .. oh well ...

Why does the data object have to know how/if it's stored? Have a data
librarian object which is responsible for handling moving objects into
and out of storage. Then test the librarian to make sure that it can
retrieve stuff in the appropriate fashion, and do your data object
unit testing (possibly) without even having the librarian loaded up.
If you *do* find that you need to have the librarian loaded for some
of the data object's methods to work, think hard and see if you can't
find some way of removing that dependency. 

The difference between a Unit test and an Acceptance test is that the
unit test tries its damndest to test the behaviour of the class and
its methods etc independently of everything else in the system.
An Acceptance test then tests that the entire system behaves as it
should for a given task.

-- 
Piers

Re: VA?

[Struan Donald]

* at 13/02 13:24 + Dave Hodgkinson said:
> 
> Anyone have an opinion on VA?

we have some of their kit and seems nice. they come with actual
manuals for a start plus the support people actually seem to know
about linux.

(note that this is gleaned from talking to our sys admin rather than
actuallly talking to their support people)

*and* they have blue LEDs :)

struan

Re: VA?

[Greg Cope]

Dave Hodgkinson wrote:
> 
> Anyone have an opinion on VA?

VA as in the Linux Server / PC company ?

If so, I've used some of there kit - which appears very nice.  The
default install is quite good, and the machines look to have been put
together well.

Software / install support was good - i.e apart from the time difference
questions were answered by knowledgable support people 



Which Beat:

Me: How do I boot from the PERC raid controler ?

Dells support person: "No Idea the Americans deal with that"

Me: How can I install Linux on this 2450 then ?

Dells support person: "No Idea the Americans deal with that"

Me: Can you give me a name or number for the American Dell Linux team ?

Dells support person: "No"

Me: How helpfull, I was under the impression that you supported Linux on
this line ?

Dells support person: "Not yet"

Me: Tell that to your sales staff, as they sold it as such.. CLICK



VA also use quality kit that has open source drivers unlike Dell's PERC
controllers in the 2450's - although that may have chnaged now.

I now source stuff from www.dnuk.com (they use mostly the same
components as VA).

Usually disclaimes apply 

Greg

> --
> Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
> Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
>   Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
>   -

Re: In defence of Perl

[Greg McCarroll]

* James Powell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 12:16:57PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote:
>   [snip]
> > > >
> > > As one of the requirements listed was content management you can 
> > > through in the BBC, especially the interactive telly division. Heck, 
> > > they even gave a presentation at YAPC::Europe.
> > > 
> > 
> > they even won a BAFTA for some of the stuff they (we) did with perl
> > 
> > http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net/pics/greg_bafta_bw.jpeg
> 
> You've just photoshopped a BAFTA on to a picture of meatloaf
> receiving his lifetime achievement award at the VH-1 music awards!
> 

i'll take that as a compliment, thanks to my reality distortian
glasses i am wearing today (they are rose tinted) ;-)

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Testing .. but not as I know it

[Robin Szemeti]

Rightio ...

since its a Tuesday and also a waning 3/4 moon its *New Methodology Day*
and the random choice from Big Ted's bookcase was XP::Installed

to wit, testing of object based modules. Firstly what do people generally
use for this? Test::Unit ?? or is there something more freindly out
there?

secondly abstraction:

If I have , say a 'data' object that can store, retreive and list various
data in a schema, good OO practice would suggest that I test the object
without knowing whether it stores its data in a flatfile, a databse or
DNA structure, what is important is that it can store, retreive and list
the info ... but obviously I have to tell it to use (in this case) a test
MySQL db to load and retreive info from .. which seems contradictory ..
or is that the difference between unit tests and acceptance tests ...
unit tests are allowed to test specific variants of modules (flatfile
based, MySQL based etc) where as the acceptance tests just work with
whatever module is loaded and treat it as a black box ...???

am I making any sense ? .. oh well ...

-- 
Robin Szemeti

The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!

Re: In defence of Perl

[James Powell]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 12:16:57PM +, Greg McCarroll wrote:
[snip]
> > >
> > As one of the requirements listed was content management you can 
> > through in the BBC, especially the interactive telly division. Heck, 
> > they even gave a presentation at YAPC::Europe.
> > 
> 
> they even won a BAFTA for some of the stuff they (we) did with perl
> 
> http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net/pics/greg_bafta_bw.jpeg

You've just photoshopped a BAFTA on to a picture of meatloaf
receiving his lifetime achievement award at the VH-1 music awards!


jp

VA?

[Dave Hodgkinson]

Anyone have an opinion on VA?
-- 
Dave Hodgkinson, http://www.hodgkinson.org
Editor-in-chief, The Highway Star   http://www.deep-purple.com
  Apache, mod_perl, MySQL, Sybase hired gun for, well, hire
  -

Re: In defence of Perl

[Greg McCarroll]

* Simon Wilcox ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> At 11:48 13/02/2001 +, you wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >As one of the requirements listed was content management you can through 
> >in the BBC, especially the interactive telly division. Heck, they even 
> >gave a presentation at YAPC::Europe.
> 
> Does anyone know if that presentation is available online anywhere ?
> 

i might have it in one of a several 100Mb of wav files awaiting checking
and mp3ing

however, having been at the presentation i dont think it is what you need

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

RE: In defence of Perl

[Simon Wilcox]

At 11:48 13/02/2001 +, you wrote:

[snip]

>As one of the requirements listed was content management you can through 
>in the BBC, especially the interactive telly division. Heck, they even 
>gave a presentation at YAPC::Europe.

Does anyone know if that presentation is available online anywhere ?

Simon

Re: In defence of Perl

[Greg McCarroll]

* Neil Ford ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> >>
> >>  This is a plea for help. Here is the situation:
> >
> >[situation snipped]
> >
> >>  My belief is that the LAMP type route provides a very cost effective,
> >>  portable and scalable solution but I concede that bigger backends are
> >>  needed for volume transaction systems.
> >
> >Funnily enough I am about half way through an article for the new
> >www.onlamp.com site that is quite relevant to your situation. I'll whip
> >myself to get it finished soon.
> >
> >>  The help I need is in answering some questions:
> >>
> >>  What big corporates are using perl in web development and
> >>  how/for what ?
> >
> >Lots. In the last couple of weeks alone I've run across one operating stock
> >exchange heavily built around Perl, and the content management system /
> >e-marketplace hubstorm (www.hubstorm.com) is almost entirely Perl based.
> >Neither are trivial applications, although I don't vouch for how effective
> >they are or if Perl was the right tool to use.
> >
> As one of the requirements listed was content management you can 
> through in the BBC, especially the interactive telly division. Heck, 
> they even gave a presentation at YAPC::Europe.
> 

they even won a BAFTA for some of the stuff they (we) did with perl

http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net/pics/greg_bafta_bw.jpeg

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

RE: In defence of Perl

[Neil Ford]

>>
>>  This is a plea for help. Here is the situation:
>
>[situation snipped]
>
>>  My belief is that the LAMP type route provides a very cost effective,
>>  portable and scalable solution but I concede that bigger backends are
>>  needed for volume transaction systems.
>
>Funnily enough I am about half way through an article for the new
>www.onlamp.com site that is quite relevant to your situation. I'll whip
>myself to get it finished soon.
>
>>  The help I need is in answering some questions:
>>
>>  What big corporates are using perl in web development and
>>  how/for what ?
>
>Lots. In the last couple of weeks alone I've run across one operating stock
>exchange heavily built around Perl, and the content management system /
>e-marketplace hubstorm (www.hubstorm.com) is almost entirely Perl based.
>Neither are trivial applications, although I don't vouch for how effective
>they are or if Perl was the right tool to use.
>
As one of the requirements listed was content management you can 
through in the BBC, especially the interactive telly division. Heck, 
they even gave a presentation at YAPC::Europe.

And of course BBC Online is predominantly Perl.

Neil.
-- 
Neil C. Ford
Yet Another Computer Solutions Company
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: In defence of Perl

[Ian Brayshaw]

> > Is there any benchmarking available of salary bands for
> > differing skills,
> > i.e. are perl guys much more than ASP guys who can also do
> > the other bits ?
> > Any other arguments I should be making !

>Yeah, Perl people cost more than ASP people and they're frickin
>impossible to find, and vary wildly in quality. This is IMHO Perl's
>single greatest barrier to acceptance, and in business terms it's an
>entirely valid point.


>From my experience, in the current contracting market ASP coders are more 
expensive then Perl developers (by around 10-15%). The variation in quality 
of output would hold for both sides. IMHO Perl developers tend to know more 
about good coding practices than VB/ASP coders (whether they practice them 
is another matter) since VB isn't exactly a difficult language and pretty 
much anyone can pick it up quickly. This could be a factor with long term 
development/maintenance if you have staff turnover.


Ian
_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Re: In defence of Perl

[Greg McCarroll]

* Jonathan Stowe ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> >
> > this is the sort of analysis that IT managers should be good at
> >
> 
> Emphasis on *should* as opposed to *are* .
> 

hey i was trying to put it in a nice way

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

RE: In defence of Perl

[Jonathan Peterson]

>
> This is a plea for help. Here is the situation:

[situation snipped]

> My belief is that the LAMP type route provides a very cost effective,
> portable and scalable solution but I concede that bigger backends are
> needed for volume transaction systems.

Funnily enough I am about half way through an article for the new
www.onlamp.com site that is quite relevant to your situation. I'll whip
myself to get it finished soon.

> The help I need is in answering some questions:
>
> What big corporates are using perl in web development and
> how/for what ?

Lots. In the last couple of weeks alone I've run across one operating stock
exchange heavily built around Perl, and the content management system /
e-marketplace hubstorm (www.hubstorm.com) is almost entirely Perl based.
Neither are trivial applications, although I don't vouch for how effective
they are or if Perl was the right tool to use.

> Why perl is better (or could be better) than a combination of
> ASP/VBScript/VB/MTC

How long have you got? :-). On the grounds that its better to attack
weaknesses than strengths, I'd concentrate on:

VBscript is a poor language.
ASP environment is very hard to debug - even worse than mod_perl :-0
ASP provides a poorer abstraction model than the latest perl offerings -
TemplateToolkit, AxKit and the like.
Locked into MS technologies.

> Is there any benchmarking available of salary bands for
> differing skills,
> i.e. are perl guys much more than ASP guys who can also do
> the other bits ?
> Any other arguments I should be making !

Yeah, Perl people cost more than ASP people and they're frickin impossible
to find, and vary wildly in quality. This is IMHO Perl's single greatest
barrier to acceptance, and in business terms it's an entirely valid point.


> My big problem is that with a huge investment in the MS code
> base, I am
> fighting a rearguard action to prevent having to adopt MS stuff, just
> because we've already spent loads on it, which seems false
> economy to me.

It isn't necessarily a false economy. You can't tell until you can show what
the ongoing costs are of the Perl system vs the MS system. Either you can
get out Excel and start doing a spreadsheet, putting in cost assumptions,
and showing that your way pays off over n months, or you can argue that no
switch should be made until the two strategies can be compared for cost
effectiveness. Either way I'd be very interested in the results :-)

As for 'chucking out code' - well, most code gets chucked out pretty soon.
Is that ASP stuff really so good it's worth keeping? What you normally want
to avoid chucking out is knowledge - familiarity with APIs, knowledge of the
strengths and weaknesses of a platform, bugs to avoid, tricks of the trade,
and so forth. Ask yourself if you really have anything here vis a vis the
ASP code? Or is just alot of lines of nothing very exciting?

> My preferred approach would be to stick with MS tech for
> maintenance of the
> existing code base and continue to sub out for developers,
> and use open
> source tech for new development, with commercial backends
> when we need that
> level of sophistication. Anyone have any comment on this ?

I would not especially recommend Perl for an environment with high staff
turnover, such as might be the case with contract work. Is your internal
documentation and structure good enough that new perl programmers can easily
get up to speed on the project?

> Thank you for your attention, all advice gratefully received.
>

Re: In defence of Perl

[Jonathan Stowe]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote:
>
> this is the sort of analysis that IT managers should be good at
>

Emphasis on *should* as opposed to *are* .

/J\
-- 
Jonathan Stowe   |
http://www.gellyfish.com |   I'm with Grep on this one
http://www.tackleway.co.uk   |

Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[James Powell]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 08:48:36AM +, Greg McCarroll wrote:
> * Mike Jarvis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> > Piers Cawley wrote:
> > 
> >  [snip]
> 
> but american hotels are so much better ... they have those giant 3-person
> size beds, almost all of them have minibars, decent showers and the staff
> give something those strange american chappies call ``customer service'',
> that would never catch on in the uk, oh no - we like to be treated like
> shit and squeezed into a single bed, needing to get up at some ridiculous
> time in the middle of the night just to guarantee warm water for the
> shower
> 

If you want excellent customer service, I can really, really recommend
the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. Not very handy for Manhattan though
(although I see they have one opening in 2003).


jp

Re: In defence of Perl

[Greg McCarroll]

* Simon Wilcox ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> At 11:12 13/02/2001 +, you wrote:
> > > This is all fine but there is a big cloud. We have a new IT manager who
> > > wants to bring all development into one team and use a single toolset for
> > > web based applications.
> >
> >why dont you just track both projects for a while and get some results
> >about the current productivity of both teams, say a month or two.
> 
> We don't actually have any developers and deciding what to recruit is at 
> the core of the issue. I covered the code development for the intranet but 
> I have to spend too much time on managing the process now & the job 
> management system sub-ed out all the development.
> 
> We could go forward with contract staff for a few months but there is 
> already a perception that they don't want to "waste" development in one 
> language by ditching it later.
> 

ok then carry out the analysis on historical information that is relevant
to your company, to even the playing field, cost yourself as a contractor
and see which of the two projects has the post functionality vs. cost

this is the sort of analysis that IT managers should be good at


-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: In defence of Perl

[Simon Wilcox]

At 11:12 13/02/2001 +, you wrote:
> > This is all fine but there is a big cloud. We have a new IT manager who
> > wants to bring all development into one team and use a single toolset for
> > web based applications.
>
>why dont you just track both projects for a while and get some results
>about the current productivity of both teams, say a month or two.

We don't actually have any developers and deciding what to recruit is at 
the core of the issue. I covered the code development for the intranet but 
I have to spend too much time on managing the process now & the job 
management system sub-ed out all the development.

We could go forward with contract staff for a few months but there is 
already a perception that they don't want to "waste" development in one 
language by ditching it later.


>then put it into an analysis model showing the cost of moving either
>team to the others toolset and the perceived cost reductions in the
>long term supporting just one toolset.
>
>these things always need to be analysed properly rather than gut
>instincts and who can argue the best.

Agree 100% !


>Greg
>
>--
>Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: In defence of Perl

[Dave Cross]

At Tue, 13 Feb 2001 11:12:47 +, Greg McCarroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > This is all fine but there is a big cloud. We have a new IT manager 
> > who wants to bring all development into one team and use a single 
> > toolset for web based applications.
> 
> why dont you just track both projects for a while and get some results
> about the current productivity of both teams, say a month or two.
> 
> then put it into an analysis model showing the cost of moving either
> team to the others toolset and the perceived cost reductions in the
> long term supporting just one toolset.
> 
> these things always need to be analysed properly rather than gut
> instincts and who can argue the best.

Ro, why not just threaten to track the productivity of both teams for
a while and see who gets the most edgy :)

Dave...

Re: In defence of Perl

[Greg McCarroll]

> This is all fine but there is a big cloud. We have a new IT manager who 
> wants to bring all development into one team and use a single toolset for 
> web based applications.

why dont you just track both projects for a while and get some results
about the current productivity of both teams, say a month or two.

then put it into an analysis model showing the cost of moving either
team to the others toolset and the perceived cost reductions in the
long term supporting just one toolset.

these things always need to be analysed properly rather than gut
instincts and who can argue the best.

Greg

-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[Steve Purkis]

Mike Jarvis wrote:
> 
> David H. Adler wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 04:32:08PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote:
> > >
> > > When looking at cost, remember what hotel rates in NYC are like
> > (almost as
> > > bad as London).  You can easily pay US$250/night for a room
> > that you would
> > > swear is in a crack house.
> >
> > But the crack is *great*!
> 
> Rooms actually in a crack house will be significantly more expensive.

Depends - sometimes they don't charge you at all!
(if you're selling alot of crack, say)

It's the whorehouses that are always expensive.

--
 Steve Purkis   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 Unix Developer www.redhotchilli.com

In defence of Perl

[Simon Wilcox]

Good morning all,

This is a plea for help. Here is the situation:

Over the last year I have been building an intranet type site based on 
Linux/Apache/MySQL/mod_perl. This is delivered via the internet, suitably 
authenticated (mod_perl/LDAP) and encrypted (mod_ssl), as most of our 1,700 
people use client supplied PC equipment.

It has been very successfully received and much more development is wanted. 
To accommodate all the requirements I have asked for funding for two perl 
developers to rebuild the site in a more modular and easy to manage form 
and add content management, forums, document management etc etc.

This is all fine but there is a big cloud. We have a new IT manager who 
wants to bring all development into one team and use a single toolset for 
web based applications.

The other development team has been working for 3 years on a web-based job 
management system which has been developed/enhanced by several third 
parties (we own the code but sub for the development resources). It is an 
NT system, using IIS, ASP, VBScript, VB dlls, MTC components and a MS SQL 
backend with stored procedures etc etc. This system is deployed on our 
client sites and does not at any time run over the internet. They now have 
a need to redevelop large parts of the application as the original 
requirements have changed considerably and are looking to bring the 
development in house.

We are now locked in argue^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussion about how to standardise our 
toolsets.

My belief is that the LAMP type route provides a very cost effective, 
portable and scalable solution but I concede that bigger backends are 
needed for volume transaction systems.

The help I need is in answering some questions:

What big corporates are using perl in web development and how/for what ?
Why perl is better (or could be better) than a combination of 
ASP/VBScript/VB/MTC
Is there any benchmarking available of salary bands for differing skills, 
i.e. are perl guys much more than ASP guys who can also do the other bits ?
Any other arguments I should be making !

My big problem is that with a huge investment in the MS code base, I am 
fighting a rearguard action to prevent having to adopt MS stuff, just 
because we've already spent loads on it, which seems false economy to me.

My preferred approach would be to stick with MS tech for maintenance of the 
existing code base and continue to sub out for developers, and use open 
source tech for new development, with commercial backends when we need that 
level of sophistication. Anyone have any comment on this ?

Thank you for your attention, all advice gratefully received.

Regards,

Simon Wilcox

Re: Technical Meeting 22nd Feb

[Roger Burton West]

On or about Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 04:50:40PM +, Matthew Robinson typed:

>Here you go, directions to Torrington.  The address is:
>
>Torrington Interactive
>2 Printing House Yard
>London
>E2 7PR

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=533478&Y=182733&A=Y&Z=1

>Printing House Yard is on the junction of Old Street, Shoreditch High St,
>Hackney Road and Kingsland Road.  We are about 10-15 minutes walk from Old
>St and Liverpool St tubes.
>
>I have attached the official 'Directions to Torrington' PDF file.  However,
>after 6:30 pm the gate on Hackney Road

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=533497&Y=182730&A=Y&Z=1

>is closed and the only entrance is
>through the back gates

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=533500&Y=182818&A=Y&Z=1

>which are on Waterson St (the first road on the left
>as you walk up Hackney Rd).

Roger

Re: Technical Meeting 22nd Feb

[Matthew Robinson]

[ Editors note I have changed the attachment its contents can be found at
  http://www.gellyfi.sh/stuff/torridirections.pdf /J\ ]

Here you go, directions to Torrington.  The address is:

Torrington Interactive
2 Printing House Yard
London
E2 7PR

Printing House Yard is on the junction of Old Street, Shoreditch High St,
Hackney Road and Kingsland Road.  We are about 10-15 minutes walk from Old
St and Liverpool St tubes.

I have attached the official 'Directions to Torrington' PDF file.  However,
after 6:30 pm the gate on Hackney Road is closed and the only entrance is
through the back gates which are on Waterson St (the first road on the left
as you walk up Hackney Rd).

Matt

At 10:56 12/02/01 -0500, you wrote:
>At Mon, 12 Feb 2001 15:49:04 +, Matthew Robinson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> >
>> >How many people can we get in the room at Torrington? I guess we'll
>> >be expecting ~30. Maybe a bit more.
>> 
>> 30 people should be no problem, over 40 and it will probably start 
>> getting a little personal.
>
>That sounds OK. I suspect that unfortunately the attendance at this
>meeting will be adversely affected by Damian being in town only a few
>days later.
>
>> >And will there be net connectivity in the room? We can probably 
>> >get by without, but it would be nice to have.
>> 
>> We have a 2meg line and we can make sure that there are a few ports 
>> patched through from the boardroom.  We are also running DHCP so 
>> people can get an IP if required.
>
>Excellent. Let's call that a plan then.
>
>Can you post directions to Torrington, and then I'll post an official
>announcement.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Dave...
>
>


I Have removed the PDF map attachment and placed it at:



Because it was bounced by majordomo :)

/J\

Re: Forwarded : ChineseWall Job External Mail Re: Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[Simon Wilcox]

At 09:15 13/02/2001 +, you wrote:

>three guesses what happened when i forward its own message containing the sh*t
>word to the list ;-)
>

Ok, ok, I'm sorry !

Yet another piece of junk from our mail admin team. The irony being that 
they deliver it anyway !

Having now got this nice new email address finally working, I have 
unsubscribed my work email from the list.

Hopefully that will stop this sort of rubbish.

-- 

Simon Wilcox | [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Forwarded : ChineseWall Job External Mail Re: Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[Greg McCarroll]

three guesses what happened when i forward its own message containing the sh*t
word to the list ;-)


* Greg McCarroll ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> 
> remember boys and girls, mind your p's & q's or get your mail archived ...
> 
> - Forwarded message from 'WLG-FAX-01_ChineseWall_Demon'@williamslea.com -
> 
> X-Authentication-Warning: mccarroll.demon.co.uk: Host [127.0.0.1] claimed to be 
>localhost
> X-Lotus-FromDomain: WILLIAMSLEA
> From: 'WLG-FAX-01_ChineseWall_Demon'@williamslea.com
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 08:39:46 +
> Subject: ChineseWall Job External Mail Re: Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway
>Hall
> 
> 
> MIMEsweeper ChineseWall
> Server:   CN=WLG-FAX-01/O=WilliamsLea
> 
>
> Mail-Info
> 
> From:   Greg McCarroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date:   02/13/2001 08:48:36 AM
> Subject:Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall
> 
>
> 'ChineseWall Job External Mail' reports:
> 
> Chinese Wall has detected at least one invalid phrase in the body of the mail.
>   ' sh*t ' found!
> 
> Mail has been archived!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> - End forwarded message -
> -- 
> Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net
-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Forwarded : ChineseWall Job External Mail Re: Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[Greg McCarroll]

remember boys and girls, mind your p's & q's or get your mail archived ...

- Forwarded message from 'WLG-FAX-01_ChineseWall_Demon'@williamslea.com -

X-Authentication-Warning: mccarroll.demon.co.uk: Host [127.0.0.1] claimed to be 
localhost
X-Lotus-FromDomain: WILLIAMSLEA
From: 'WLG-FAX-01_ChineseWall_Demon'@williamslea.com
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 08:39:46 +
Subject: ChineseWall Job External Mail Re: Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway
 Hall


MIMEsweeper ChineseWall
Server:   CN=WLG-FAX-01/O=WilliamsLea

Mail-Info

From:   Greg McCarroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date:   02/13/2001 08:48:36 AM
Subject:Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

'ChineseWall Job External Mail' reports:

Chinese Wall has detected at least one invalid phrase in the body of the mail.
  ' shit ' found!

Mail has been archived!





- End forwarded message -
-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net

Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall

[Greg McCarroll]

* Mike Jarvis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> Piers Cawley wrote:
> 
> > > Hmm. I assume group is cheaper, though. Well, of the list, I'd be
> > > surprised if that many dropped out, and I had stupidly forgotten Grep's
> > > interest, so that takes us up to 12. Which may be enough to guarantee a
> > > group. Aah, tricksy.
> >
> > Am I down as interested? If not, I am. Am I down as interesting? Er...
> 
> I'll be taking the Accela up to see you guys.
> 
> When looking at cost, remember what hotel rates in NYC are like (almost as
> bad as London).  You can easily pay US$250/night for a room that you would
> swear is in a crack house.
> 

but american hotels are so much better ... they have those giant 3-person
size beds, almost all of them have minibars, decent showers and the staff
give something those strange american chappies call ``customer service'',
that would never catch on in the uk, oh no - we like to be treated like
shit and squeezed into a single bed, needing to get up at some ridiculous
time in the middle of the night just to guarantee warm water for the
shower


-- 
Greg McCarroll  http://www.mccarroll.uklinux.net