Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!spock!kim
From: kim@spock (Kim Letkeman)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: Overused metaphors - Software ICs, etc.
Message-ID: <4078@kim>
Date: 8 Aug 90 14:37:00 GMT
References: <23915@nigel.udel.EDU> <2088@esunix.UUCP> <5436@stpstn.UUCP>
Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada.
Lines: 38
In-reply-to: cox@stpstn.UUCP's message of 7 Aug 90 20:07:57 GMT

In article <5436@stpstn.UUCP>, cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) writes:
| In article <2088@esunix.UUCP: rtrosper@esunix.UUCP (Robert Trosper) writes:
| :
| :Well - not to beat a dying horse. Let the Software IC myth go quietly
| :into it's own good night. Useless things all go there anyway.
| :
| :				Robert Trosper
| 
| My crystal ball is no better than anyone else's. But just bear in mind 
| that it was the cottage industry gunsmiths, and not interchangeable parts,
| that were discovered to be useless during the industrial revolution.

Hmmm ... I would suggest that during the industrial revolution the
cottage industry gunsmiths were merely replaced by more advanced and
efficient methods, not by a plethora of interchangeable parts. 

In other words, if I want to purchase a gun today, I do not go and
purchase all of the necessary "firearm IC's" and build my own.
Instead, I go and buy either a mass produced gun, or I spend the big
bucks for a gun built by one of the remaining "cottage industry master
craftsmen of gunsmithing."

In many of these "paradigm shift" or "software IC" or "product versus
process" arguments, the basis is a flawed analogy. One simply cannot
compare the extremely complex software creation process with anything
that is manufactured in the more traditional sense.

I'm certain that OOP will make a huge dent in the way in which
software is built in the future, but I can't believe that it will
completely replace existing methods in every situation.

I am getting a bit less enthused by the "paradigm shift | software IC
| product versus process" discussion each time I read it. There have
been too many excellent postings in the last few weeks that have been
opening holes in the arguments, and flawed analogies don't plug them.

-- 
Kim Letkeman    mitel!spock!kim@uunet.uu.net