Re: Today (Feb 26) IBM announcements

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:29:41 -0800, Alistair wrote:

> On 28 Feb, 01:51, "Pete Dashwood" <dashw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> wrote:
> 
>> In fact, the main argument  for doing the Java conversion is so that
new age
>> programmers can maintain code (and they need to do this less in an OO
>> language, than a non-OO one, if they play their cards right...) in a
>> language they are familiar with. If this language is also perceived as
being
>> "past its sell-by date", then there may be no point in converting to
it.
>> Instead, re-write or re-script what needs change and do it in whatever
>> language facilitates that, whether it is C#, PHP, or Ruby...
>>
>> Ruby is generating fierce interest in Europe, even more than elsewhere.
>>
> 
> So too is GROOVY

There is an argument that these languages are so productive that rewriting
things is a viable approach. I was at a Ruby User group meeting yesterday
and one of the guys had a web forms package. One particular piece of code
was all of 60 lines of code. He apologised for this and solicited
suggestions as to how it could be done better.

In my rewrite of the COBOLForGCC compiler in Lisp, I am getting a
reduction in lines of code of about 70% compared to C. This does
qualitatively change things. Rewriting 600 lines of code is a different
proposition to rewriting 2,000 lines.

Tim