From Keith.Bierman@eng.sun.com Thu Mar 19 03:52:42 1992 Received: from Sun.COM by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA29784; Thu, 19 Mar 92 03:52:42 +0100 Received: from Eng.Sun.COM (zigzag-bb.Corp.Sun.COM) by Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA22789; Wed, 18 Mar 92 18:52:23 PST Received: from chiba.Eng.Sun.COM by Eng.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA04044; Wed, 18 Mar 92 18:51:50 PST Received: from localhost by chiba.Eng.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA27206; Wed, 18 Mar 92 18:51:38 PST Message-Id: <9203190251.AA27206@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM> To: walt@netcom.com (Walt Brainerd) Cc: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.74) From market surveys to "design" In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 18 Mar 92 16:34:53 PST." <9203190034.AA10020@netcom.netcom.com> Date: Wed, 18 Mar 92 18:51:38 PST From: Keith.Bierman@eng.sun.com X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 >long interesting discussions.... I'm working from a low baud line, so please excuse the compression, and typos .... I have removed attributions, because I may have made a mistaken in my 1 line summaries. In any event, I wish to argue with the ideas, not the personalities involved ;> >.... how many users do "I" have ... Marketing prefers that I not discuss precise figures. I think it safe to say we have more than 100K users. Our articulated policy for years has been correctness (viz. correctly rounded base conversion "infinite" pi for trig arg reduction, etc.) portability (viz. easy to port *to*) and then performance. During the last 3.5 years (my time at sun) I've told this personally to at least 1000 users, and sales have steadily increased. I do not believe that *performance*uber*alles describes all Fortran programmers. I do believe that Presley is quite probably right in understanding the mind(s) of Convex's customers. Not all market segments share the same focus. >... value of surveys.... Vendors do this sort of thing. I don't think we are prepared to share our results; competitive advantage and all that stuff. I don't think ANSI has funding to do anything resembling a good job of it. So I am dubious of value of doing a volunteer effort. Bad information is worse than "no" information. >.... analysis of vendor vs. user ... Because someone's paycheck is cut by a vendor, that doesn't mean that the individual is voting as a compiler writer. I can't speak for others, but in my case I don't work for a compiler group. My background is in writing math libraries and writing application programs, and my biases are in the direction of making my old job(s) and the jobs of my current company's customers "easier" "better" "more productive". X3H5 has several folks from vendor shops who represent application departments, not compiler writers. So I am dubious of simple headcounts of the membership roster to determine "proper representation". >.... debates about process ... I don't think these are totally out of line. Standard making is in general "broken". We have many examples of nominally 'cooeperative' standards actually conflicting. SVID, ANSI (C), X/OPEN and proper mathematics have several modest conflicts ... modest to all but the authors of things like "libm"! SVID, for example, *requires* that the bessel function return 0 when mathematics tells us it should return a small number (which on an IEEE 7|854 machine should be "subnormal"). > ... more design up front The description given describes the WaterFall model of sw development. There seems to be a large movement *away* from it. The OO folks, the rapid prototyping folks, the evolutionary model folks (and yes, there are overlaps ;>) have all junked it. In my experience the WF model is virtually worthless. I readily acknowledge that experience varies, and is certainly domain bound. The WF model *may* be very good for standards; but I would not conclude that it is because it helps create good sw. I *think* history suggests it hasn't helped sw development in the aggregate. > ... misc. people making personal attacks on other X3J3'ers to third parties Without knowing precise details, one cannot easily judge (actually *I* can't easily judge). It seems to me there are two wildly different scenarios: 1) incorrect and libeous personal slurs (J. Random Hacker is ignorant and has a lock on the chair thanks to various photographs taken during the infamous meeting ....) 2) J. Random Hacker has opposed the standard (as "we know it") for years, and one might want to take that into account when making purchase decisions. The former is unprofessional and probably illegal (I am not a lawyer; I try not to play one on TV). The latter does not seem to me to be objectionable. Especially when/if the position is a reflection of material "in the public record" viz. committee votes, net postings, etc. Not everyone in the public has read the record ;> > .... elitest snobbery in voting .... yes and no. I do not believe that everyone is qualified to vote on everything. In an RepDem, most citizens get to vote (e.g. those that haven't had their right removed, like certain criminals) for the folks that will actually make decisions. In mathematics, folks with special reputations get to essentially make the decisions (a proof is merely an argument that is used to convience the "reigning lords" that something is true. Most technical groups have "referrees" and papers aren't accepted that don't pass muster. Does this prevent some valid new insights from seeing the light of day? Sure. Does it prevent lots of trash .... also sure. The undergraduate student who has 2 weeks of *even* Prof. L's course is not as qualified to judge the work of X3J3 as a programmer with 20 years experience, responsibility for a large body of Fortran code, and etc. I don't think there are simple answers to these questions. I think the debate is healthy and I agree with Presley that we have to act as adult as we can. If the committee cannot come to agreement *somehow* I do not think that there is a higher authority that can reasonably be appealed to (X3 has the *right* to overrule J3, but it cannot do so *reasonably*. If they had the wherewithall to do the work, it would be their job ;>). While I think the minority should be heard (and their arguments recorded for posterity), I would hope that in the future, that the minority will not take actions which delay work for years at a time. A standard in 1985 (even a suboptimal one) would have been better than one in 1992. Evolution *will* occur; we can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. Scott McNealy's dictim #N 1) Agree and commit 2) Disagree and commit 3) Get out of the way btw: I've voted on the TAG position more than once ;>