[Sussex] RE: [Sussex] Moving VB to LINUX - DeLux

[Steve Dobson]

Dominic

On 14 January 2003 at Dominic Clay 14:38 wrote:
> It does sound very interesting.  But are we then going to end 
> up with some nasty spaghetti coding on a different platform, still 
> complaining that it cant find the Access database... =)

But that's better for many than having no way of supporting
a company critical application.
 
> There is still a big question about educating many VB hugging 
> developers to have a more 'long term' view in their coding
> practise.  Try persuading many VB developers to consider the
> project/projects as a whole before scoping a variable globaly etc.  

It's not just VB programmers but everyone.  How many system do you
think are out there that are now twice as old as the plan for the
project?  Look at all the problem we had with Y2K checking!
 
> <DEVILS ADVOCATE>
> Perhaps this legacy code is better off left where it is and 
> persuade the management to look forward wholeheartedly.  After
> all, any decent developer could support this legacy code until
> it falls over and dies...
> Is this conversion just a wacky geeky idea that strikes us as fun...
> </DEVILS ADVOCATE>

The problem here is that management have these thinks called "budgets".
There have now bearing on software development[1] but it does cause
questions like "How much will it cost to port it to ....?"  and
"Can we keep the old system going?".

Unfortunately software engineers, being the honest and technically
brilliant people they are, tend to answer these questions with "lots"
and "yes".  This is why legacy system stay around so long.

Steve

[1] Software development costs what it costs.  The amount put aside in
    "the budget" is a work of fiction :-)