[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Howard S Shubs]

In article <SpsZr.1352$GQ4.714 at fx05.am4>, ChrisQ <meru at devnull.com> 
wrote:

> Not uncommon, ime. It does depend on the company and individual culture as
> well. It's not uncommon to see people go straight to the the editor and 
> start
> coding immediately to "design" the system, whereas a bit more time upfront
> with paper, sharp pencil and discussing solutions to the requirements, can
> save weeks of debug time. ie: Decisions made early on can have a 
> significant
> effect later :-)...

That, I can't argue with.  The big area we differ in is that I've yet to 
work in any kind of OOP environment.  Given non-OOP tools, I'm sure you 
can see where I'm coming from.

What I've seen is that it's very difficult to nail down requirements.  
You can nail them down, get sign-off, and start working, just to see the 
requirements change.

Or, on my most recent programming job, we were working in 30+ year old 
VMS code.  Forensic programming can be interesting.  It can be fun.  But 
it requires a lot of debugging time unless you have an amazing amount of 
time to learn the code, and no one does.

Currently, I'm trying to push myself through a Java book.  Once that's 
done, I'll re-evaluate.


IMHO, the main benefit to VMS, which I've yet to see in any kind of 
UNIX, is the calling standard.  Without it, debuggers just can't work as 
well, or at least I've never seen one as good as what's available on 
VMS.  Yes, you can say that the VMS lock manager is key, and it is, but 
the calling standard is central.

-- 
May joy be yours all the days of your life! - Phina
We are but a moment's sunlight, fading in the grass. - The Youngbloods
Those who eat natural foods die of natural causes. - Kperspective