afscian@violet.waterloo.edu (Anthony Scian) (09/25/89)
In article <JWG1.89Sep22114857@bunny.gte.com> jwg1@gte.com (James W. Gish) writes: >I too, was told on numerous ocassions, that "we will start shipping >next Monday". However, we got a call a couple of days ago saying our >tape was being made - so I hope to have 2.2 very soon. It will be >nice when our industry develops to the point where expected ship dates >become more real. I can't speak for ISE and other companies, but >where I have worked in the past, the sales and marketing folks seemed >to be compelled to make false claims to the customers about shipping >dates, even when told by the engineers up front that it just couldn't >be done. Maybe if more of us start using Eiffel....:-) Obviously, using Eiffel hasn't helped ISE eliminate these sort of problems. This type of experience does not look good for a company that advertises "Eiffel is the industrial application of software engineering techniques". ISE gives you "incredible support" and (with Eiffel) "can solve your problems both today and tomorrow". [Dr.Dobbs, Sept. 1989] A company that makes these sort of statements has to back them up with high-quality software delivered on time, not promises. Lest I sound overly critical of ISE, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the OOSC book and most of Dr.Meyer's published articles, so I'm not anti-Eiffel. I would like to see Eiffel prevail over C++ but this will take nuturing and commitment to ISE's seminal customer base. -- Anthony //// Anthony Scian afscian@violet.uwaterloo.ca afscian@violet.waterloo.edu //// "I can't believe the news today, I can't close my eyes and make it go away" -U2
yost@esquire.UUCP (David A. Yost) (09/26/89)
In article <16636@watdragon.waterloo.edu> afscian@violet.waterloo.edu (Anthony Scian) writes: >Obviously, using Eiffel hasn't helped ISE eliminate these sort of problems. >This type of experience does not look good for a company that advertises >"Eiffel is the industrial application of software engineering techniques". Although some of the tools ISE ships are written in Eiffel (e.g. 'short'), they have not yet taken the step of rewriting the compiler in Eiffel (it's in C and YACC). I bet in retrospect they wish they had done it earlier. I think I heard they were going to start rewriting it after 2.2 is released for 3.0. That will be an important milestone. --dave yost