Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ariel.unm.edu!nmsu!opus!ted From: ted@nmsu.edu (Ted Dunning) Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog Subject: Re: Can I talk about Parlog here? Message-ID: Date: 22 Nov 90 21:36:01 GMT References: <2540@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk> <1990Nov22.174222.8614@ida.liu.se> Sender: news@NMSU.Edu Organization: NMSU Computer Science Lines: 49 In-reply-to: felkl@aste16.Berkeley.EDU's message of 22 Nov 90 17:42:22 GMT In article <1990Nov22.174222.8614@ida.liu.se> felkl@aste16.Berkeley.EDU (Feliks Kluzniak) writes: In article <2540@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk>, Jim Crammond says: ... |> The parallel parlog system isn't a commercial piece of software ... ... Personally, I find the distinction between commercial software and research software (i.e. software that just does not have to work, as long as it works sometimes!) rather strange. As a practising programmer, I am shocked by the apparently widespread acceptance of this distinction. given the above statement, i find it hard to imagine that mister kuzniak has _ever_ worked on a commercial grade software product. it may be that he has been involved in some garage scale products, but even this seems unlikely. anyone who has actually had to deliver a working product to several thousand customers would know that there is a world of difference between writing a program that satisfies your own needs and then making it available to others and producing a program that can be sold on any reasonable scale. writing the code in the first place is only a minor part of the problem. installation instructions, user documentation, internal documentation for maintenance by others, and even setting up systems for producing shippable copies are all an enormous time burden. after the sale, the support issue raises its head with problems which utterly the original problem of getting some code to do something interesting. in a research environment, it _is_ satisfactory to solve part of the problem, and it may be that this solution will be interesting or useful to others. in a product, it is _not_ usually satisfactory to create a product which does not live up to reasonable expectations of completeness and documentation on the part of the user. if mister kluzniak would like to learn the difference between the two worlds, i suggest he get a job in support for a large computer company. this is where the difference between research and product is most apparent. -- I don't think the stories are "apocryphal". I did it :-) .. jthomas@nmsu.edu