Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!mintaka!mintaka!weiss From: weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) Subject: Re: Arity's so-called upgrade In-Reply-To: todd@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu's message of 16 Mar 91 19:25:51 GMT Message-ID: Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius) Organization: MIT Lab for Computer Science References: <11768@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <11954@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <1991Mar15.050522.21309@athena.cs.uga.edu> <11987@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Date: 19 Mar 91 15:13:49 Lines: 112 Let me try to respond to the flurry of recent posts that have resulted from my follow-up to Todd's original post. Several people said that this forum is indeed an appropriate place to discuss vendor-related issues. I never said otherwise. What I said was that it is no substitute for direct communication, and I listed several direct ways in which folks might talk to us. Frankly, I was concerned that if I responded to the content of Todd's post here I would waste the time of the majority of readers of comp.lang.prolog and be forced to use net resources to promote our product. I was struck by the unfairness of Todd's post, given past dealings. Todd lives in Hawaii, we are in Boston. His reasonably toned letter (his words - and having read the letter I would not disagree) is dated March 4 and his less reasonably toned post is dated March 5, hardly enough time for us to receive the letter, let alone respond. I mention this because I understood Todd's reference to his letter to mean that we had been given the opportunity to respond and had not. My first thought was that the letter was sitting on the addressee's desk, as she had been out sick for some days. It was only when the letter arrived a few days later that I knew what was going on. Todd, if you had given us the courtesy of coming to us first, as Richard O'Keefe assumed you had, you would then have much better information to include in your posts. Richard writes: > Note that the poster who started this thread *had* gone to the vendor > first. Going to the net afterwards was a perfectly sensible thing to do. Given the timing of the post, you did *not* come to us first, even though your post implies that you have. That is what is so unfair about it. Todd raises a variety of issues in his three posts and in his letter. His letter has been answered and I will not respond to it here. As for the content of his posts there is much that Todd says that is accurate and much that is not. I will agree that Arity's documentation leaves a lot to be desired and does contain some inaccuracies. I should note that the most recent review (AI Expert - Jan '91) described our documentation as "two well-written manuals," even though it points out the problem with examples that do not work properly: "Some of the predicate examples do not work properly ... but most of the examples function properly and are very helpful for learning the predicate functions." We attempt to address the problem with readme files - not a perfect solution, but a workable one. To reprint the manuals for this release would have both delayed the release and raised the cost considerably, and Todd already feels that the price is too high (I will address pricing issues below). In fact, the next "release" of the manuals will most-likely be on-line documentation, a format that is a lot more easily updated than printed documentation (not to mention cheaper). Todd's other major point has to do with whether or not version 6.0 is a "major upgrade." Todd equates this to whether or not the product has a "modern programming environment (when compared to Borland C++, Quick C, Actor, etc.)." Indeed, Arity's programming environment is not as full featured as those mentioned, and we have never claimed otherwise. We do provide a windowed editor, debugger, etc. and our environment is quite usable, but not as powerful as those mentioned. However Arity's focus in the Prolog market has never been on slick development environments. We have always been targetted at the professional, production programmer. Even though our products are often used for education and research we consider our primary market to be programmers who are producing applications to be distributed either for sale or for internal use within an organization. To this end, the bulk of our efforts go into performance and programming features and a much smaller effort goes into environments. We concentrate on Arity/Prolog code being as small and fast as possible and embedible into a wide variety of applications. Measured by this yardstick version 6.0 is indeed a major upgrade - it is a significant extension of Arity/Prolog performance and power. In order to build V6 we have modified practically every module in the system. Todd also objects to the way we priced the upgrade: "... outraged by what Arity has foisted on its customers as a $127 (including shipping) upgrade." In his next post he says: "Borland, on the other hand, charged me $99+shipping to go from Turbo C++ 1.0 to Borland C++ 2.0." I think our products are an excellent value. If you are interested enough to call us, we would be happy to discuss with you the details of the upgrade and you can decide for yourself whether the upgrade is worth it. We don't "foist" our products on anyone. The comparison with Borland is highly misleading. Especially since their pricing structure did not allow them to stay in the Prolog tools business for very long. Let's face it folks, good, bad, or indifferent, there are a lot more C and C++ programmers out there than Prolog programmers. This means that the average Prolog programmer must pay a larger proportion of the development costs of good development tools if such tools are to remain available. It does neither Arity nor its users any good to price ourselves so low that we can't afford to remain in the business. Again, I must stress that the best way to voice your approval or disapproval and to influence future decisions at Arity is to communicate with us directly. I'm sorry Todd feels that he needs to muster support by organizing a letter writing campaign to back up what he has to say. A customer with complaints is not "shouting in the wind," as Todd suggests. User feedback is a major source of direction for new versions as it has been for V6. Please don't send me bug reports through posting or E-mail. Our technical support function (which is excellent, and cheap!) is administered through our own BBS, FAX, telephone or U.S. Mail. Again, here are the numbers: BBS: (508) 369-5622 Fax: (508) 371-1487 Phone: (508) 371-1243 Mail: Arity Corporation 29 Domino Drive Concord, MA 01742 -Paul Weiss -Arity Corp.