7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#1

Post by startupcrazy » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 2:44 PM UTC

A lone programmer rewrites an entire project in 2 months. It uses executable specifications. It is thrown away because nobody else understands it. (LISP, YACC. or something else?)

7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months
metromodemedia.com

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#2

Post by startupcrazy » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 3:02 PM UTC

Executable specifications. The new compiler was about 5000 lines of Java. The developer says he can probably reduce most of 3000 lines of it to about 700 productions in YACC. Of course, nobody is interested!

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#3

Post by andreyf » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 3:56 PM UTC

Sounds like a prisoner's dilemma kind of problem... individual firms won't benefit from open sourcing unless everyone open sources.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#4

Post by brlewis » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 4:05 PM UTC

andreyf wrote: post #3

Sounds like a prisoner's dilemma kind of problem... individual firms won't benefit from open sourcing unless everyone open sources.

Not at all. Open sourcing your software not only means you share the benefits, but also the costs:

http://web.mit.edu/wwwdev/cgiemail/buybuild.html

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#5

Post by mynameishere » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 4:18 PM UTC

I thought for sure this would mention another "innovation" that came out of Chrysler, "Extreme Programming":

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WasChryslerComprehensiveCompensationS...

Short story: Chrylser had been trying to unify its various systems and subsystems for payroll and had failed and failed. Eventually, a group of consultants were brought in who had invented a particular agile technique, extreme-programming. Of course, the project failed, but that didn't keep the consultants from spreading the XP word throughout the world.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#6

Post by ratsbane » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 4:31 PM UTC

This sounds familiar. I went through something like this at a Fortune-100 company which I won't name here, except they rejected the solution because it wasn't written in .Net and budgeted around seven figures to rewrite their existing horrible system in .Net. I quit somewhere along the way but I still feel the frustration, pain, and perhaps even anger whenever I think of the stupidity and waste. I hope I never have to go through that again.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#7

Post by axiom » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 5:34 PM UTC

He's talking about SCADA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA)

Sounds really impressive. If anyone has ever worked with PLCs you know what a nightmare it is to interface with them and deal with their primitve data types. Not to mention programming them in ladder logic (yeah, most industrial machines are still programmed in ladder logic straight from the 1800s.)

So he's not kidding, this is a BIG deal.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#8

Post by edw519 » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 5:34 PM UTC

Actually, this writer's conclusion, open source, is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I believe, and what I think is the premise of this forum.

Mega-institution isn't aware of its own golden needle in its haystack? Good! Another opportunity for a couple of hackers in a spare bedroom.

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#9

Post by mpfefferle » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 5:36 PM UTC

Anyone have any idea what this consultant might have been doing to get this kind of productivity?

Re: 7 Person Year Application Rewritten in 2 Person Months

#10

Post by rwebb » Tue, Oct 02, 2007, 5:49 PM UTC

Uhh...where does the $50 billion come from again?