Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!uunet!sytex!smcl
From: smcl@sytex.com (Scott McLoughlin)
Subject: Re: Yes, but how much will it cost?
Message-ID: <Jy362c2w165w@sytex.com>
Sender: bbs@sytex.com
Organization: Sytex Access Ltd.
References: <1995Mar17.155555.29303@VFL.Paramax.COM>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 16:14:18 GMT
Lines: 50

dave@gvls1.vfl.paramax.com (David Lee Matuszek) writes:

> My question is, is Apple going to push this language, or is it
> going to be another of the MPW things costing hundreds of dollars
> that only professional Mac programmers will be able to afford?
> (I'm a programmer, but I get to use a Mac only for recreational
> programming.)  If it's going to be priced like Apple's other
> compilers, I'll stick with CodeWarrior, thanks.

Howdy,

I'd like to second the pricing issue.  The programming world is
not just divided into hobbyists (cheap to free) and rocket 
scientists (cost is no object). Most of my professional, for 
hire programming as an employee or consultant has been medium
sized statisticial models, "executive information systems" working
on both stand alone and network accessible databases, etc.

Most of this work has been for a group of folks we can call
"policy makers" who work either at desks in the government or
in "the field" or at conferences.

These contracts start out very price competitive. The project
managers are usually smart people, but they are smart about
particular policy domains (health, environment, population,
etc.) - not about building software.

Buying >$1000 programming tools is simply not an option.
Running the resulting programs on anything other than the
"typical PC configuration" is also not an option.  This is
due to both (1) what the clients "expect" to see in a bid 
for the job regarding labor+materials (2) how the programs
will be used and distributed.  With regard to (2), there 
will be no support once the programs are written (the contract
is over), they will be given away at policy conferences or
to field workers in Ghana or whatever, they will be installed
on whatever machine the US gov decides to give their deskbound
workers, etc.

Anyway, my point is that alot of professional programming
occurs under financial and machine resource constraints,
especially when contracting. It would be nice to use a
dynamic language for these projects, but any form of
sticker shock or extra "resource hit" will make this
impossible.

=============================================
Scott McLoughlin
Conscious Computing
=============================================
