5 ms·

> If you want truly reliable software and have the budget, then you just need to throw process at the problem -- it doesn't matter much which language you use.

by mietek 12y ago

> If you want truly reliable software and have the budget, then you just need to throw process at the problem -- it doesn't matter much which language you use. I also generally agree with your comment, but I have to take issue with this statement. If this were true, Ericsson wouldn’t have had to abandon the AXE-N project. Quoting from Joe Armstrong’s PhD thesis[1]: “1995: The AXE-N project was a project to build a “next generation switch” to replace the Ericsson AXE-10. This extremely large project ran from 1987-95. After the AXE-N project collapsed a decision was made to “restart” the project using Erlang. This project eventually resulted in the development of the AXD301 switch.” “During the period 1996–1997 a three-person group (myself, Magnus Fröberg and Martin Björklund) redesigned and implemented the OTP core libraries.” “1998: Ericsson delivered the first AXD301. The AXD301 is the subject of one of our case studies in Chapter 8. At the time of writing (2003) the AXD301 has over 1.7 million lines of Erlang code which probably makes it the largest system ever to be written in a functional style of programming.” [1]: http://www.erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf http://www.erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf

lomnakkus 12y ago
Thanks for digging out the history. I don't think we can conclude from your excerpts that the deciding factor was Erlang. However, I accept that my statement that it was "just engineers and process" may have been exaggerated or mistaken.
- mietek 12y ago
  The deciding factor, as always, is the ability to manage complexity. There are many ways to improve this ability, and process is certainly one of them, however, the choice of programming language is, to my mind, the most important one. XenSource/Citrix is another great example[1]: “In 2002, members of Cambridge University released the open source Xen project to provide free high-performance virtualization technology for the masses.” “In 2004, the team founded the company XenSource and began developing the enterprise-level distributed management software that would make virtualization easy and form the backbone of their products in the years to come. A team of thirty dedicated programmers in Palo Alto California began developing the software in C, Python and Ruby.” “Two years later, the US team had succeeded in burning tens of millions of dollars funding but had failed to produce any product. So XenSource, under new management, took the bold step of replacing their large team of US developers with a team of only four British OCaml developers. Within months, all of the Python and Ruby was replaced, both reliability and performance were dramatically improved and the company shipped their first product. One year later, XenSource sold to Citrix for $500M.” [1]: http://ocamlnews.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/stunning-slides-about-growth-of-ocaml.html http://ocamlnews.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/stunning-slides-abou...
  - lomnakkus 12y ago
    Indeed. I must admit that my pro-FP inner geek giggled just a little bit at this bit of "money talks". I think it's imperative to question the "reliability and performance were dramatically improved" kinds of statements with quantitative research. It's just that this kind of research is insanely hard. (Disclosure: I'm definitely on the FP team, but I want do be able to argue objectively and quantitatively for the benefits of my approach.)
    - mietek 12y ago
      I fully agree. Have you seen the 1994 Hudak study[1]? “A simplified version of real-world problem was chosen by the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). This problem, a geometric region server (geo-server) is one component of a much larger system, NSWC’s AEGIS Weapons System (AWS), which NSWC is in the process of redesigning.” “The participants, each considered an expert programmer in one of the programming languages being tested, was asked to write a fully functional prototype of the geo-server, while keeping track of software development metrics such as development time and lines of code and documentation.” “The results indicate that the Haskell prototype took significantly less time to develop and was considerably more concise and easier to understand than the corresponding prototypes written in several different imperative languages, including Ada and C++.” [1]: http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf
      - lomnakkus 12y ago
        Yes, indeed, I've read it. Unfortunately, I think we should regard the early studies (such as Hudak's) as basically preliminary and mostly not-well-founded. I know that's horribly conservative, but y'know...

by mietek 12y ago

lomnakkus 12y ago

Thanks for digging out the history. I don't think we can conclude from your excerpts that the deciding factor was Erlang. However, I accept that my statement that it was "just engineers and process" may have been exaggerated or mistaken.

mietek 12y ago
The deciding factor, as always, is the ability to manage complexity. There are many ways to improve this ability, and process is certainly one of them, however, the choice of programming language is, to my mind, the most important one. XenSource/Citrix is another great example[1]: “In 2002, members of Cambridge University released the open source Xen project to provide free high-performance virtualization technology for the masses.” “In 2004, the team founded the company XenSource and began developing the enterprise-level distributed management software that would make virtualization easy and form the backbone of their products in the years to come. A team of thirty dedicated programmers in Palo Alto California began developing the software in C, Python and Ruby.” “Two years later, the US team had succeeded in burning tens of millions of dollars funding but had failed to produce any product. So XenSource, under new management, took the bold step of replacing their large team of US developers with a team of only four British OCaml developers. Within months, all of the Python and Ruby was replaced, both reliability and performance were dramatically improved and the company shipped their first product. One year later, XenSource sold to Citrix for $500M.” [1]: http://ocamlnews.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/stunning-slides-about-growth-of-ocaml.html http://ocamlnews.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/stunning-slides-abou...
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  Indeed. I must admit that my pro-FP inner geek giggled just a little bit at this bit of "money talks". I think it's imperative to question the "reliability and performance were dramatically improved" kinds of statements with quantitative research. It's just that this kind of research is insanely hard. (Disclosure: I'm definitely on the FP team, but I want do be able to argue objectively and quantitatively for the benefits of my approach.)
  - mietek 12y ago
    I fully agree. Have you seen the 1994 Hudak study[1]? “A simplified version of real-world problem was chosen by the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). This problem, a geometric region server (geo-server) is one component of a much larger system, NSWC’s AEGIS Weapons System (AWS), which NSWC is in the process of redesigning.” “The participants, each considered an expert programmer in one of the programming languages being tested, was asked to write a fully functional prototype of the geo-server, while keeping track of software development metrics such as development time and lines of code and documentation.” “The results indicate that the Haskell prototype took significantly less time to develop and was considerably more concise and easier to understand than the corresponding prototypes written in several different imperative languages, including Ada and C++.” [1]: http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf http://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr1049.pdf
    - lomnakkus 12y ago
      Yes, indeed, I've read it. Unfortunately, I think we should regard the early studies (such as Hudak's) as basically preliminary and mostly not-well-founded. I know that's horribly conservative, but y'know...