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Same Dev Tools/Language/Framework For Everyone?
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:06 PM
from the one-size-fits-none dept.
from the one-size-fits-none dept.
AC writes "Upper management of the company I work at recently declared that all new development should be done with a single combination of development tools, language, and framework. The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one group / project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch. Of course the chosen language / framework used by everybody does not need to be the best tool for the job, but it should be good enough to allow every project to get done. What does Slashdot think about this? Is it OK to use the same development tools and language for every project, instead of choosing what fits best? Will the time saved be sufficient to offset the time lost to the 'not the best tool for the job' environment developers will be forced to use?"
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Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Interesting)
We frequently encounter this issue with our clients (government, military, and commercial). We know that this can be a very bad thing if they capriciously apply it across the board. What we have recommended allows for the most flexibility, while minimizing the "tools". In order of importance.
1. Cygwin (0$)
2. Eclipse (0-250$)
3. Teraterm (0$)
4. Adobe CS whichever (900-2500$)
5. Microsoft Office 2003. (400$)
This would allow any team member to move from one workstation/area of work to another without too much effort.
As to the language, we recommend that one be chosen for "prototyping/scripting" and another for "enterprise" development.
With Cygwin you get the CM tools, build tools, perl/bash/etc. (Already included tool set under Mac/Linux/Unix...) With Eclipse you get every thing too. (works on all OS) Teraterm nice term, just don't like putty myself. (not needed outside of windows) Adobe for those that like spending money. (Mac/Windows) Office, they are going to buy it anyway.
Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Funny)
If it's big enough you can rely on picking the right tool for the job... developers simply chose the tool and compete based on who can implement the software best measured by customer satisfaction reports, rather than bugs or performance. Rather than directing outcomes we foster a system based on evolutionary theory. Developers are pitted against each other, and the weak developers get stabbed or maybe scalped. The Head Developer wears a necklace of threaded ears and walks around the office taking his share of the women and of food and clothing. Every night a fire burns and the drum beat calls developers out to compete for their very lives. Generations later Alpha developers will rise to feast on their flesh, crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and we will hear the lamentations of their women.
This will really only work at large companys though :(
ps. Hi gordon in #jelliffefans...bring your A game!Parent
Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, whoa, whoa! You forgot the most important thing: source control!
Perforce is probably good for larger companies, while Subversion or Git should be good for small/medium companies.
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Informative)
[..] I suspect the advantages are at the administration level (reorganizing, branching, merging, etc).
Having gone from an svn shop to a Perforce shop, I can definitely say that branching/merging is much easier in svn than in Perforce. Also, the whole "client" concept is a bad alternative to file system state files (i.e. .svn or CVS directories).
I'm not saying that using the filesystem is the best alternative possible, but it's the least worst right now.
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is this crap of "any team member to move from one workstation/area of work to another"?
If someone is good at something, ferchrissake KEEP THEM THERE!
There's nothing more devastating for a developer than to be ripped out of context and forced to learn something entirely different, but just as difficult, just because some braindead accountant thinks all developers are alike.
Please stop that. I think it has a more than measurable impact on productivity, not to mention staff morale.
Translation: everyone who thinks programmers are interchangeable should go fsck themselves with a chainsaw.
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Funny)
If someone is good at something, ferchrissake KEEP THEM THERE!
I see that finishing a project appears to be a foreign concept to you.
-jcr
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:4, Interesting)
My first guess is that he may work for an accounting and or payroll function and he might not be suited for a training department or operations programming. (or vice versa)
Were I work there are several different departments all with different programming needs. It helps to know some intimate details about accounting in order to give them the right tools to do their jobs. It would also be a pretty steep learning curve for that same developer to put their accounting knowledge on the bench while being tasked to write a program for the operation of the company. Without knowledge of the processes that go on in the operation, they will likely create software that's useful, but not very elegant or meaningful for the front line supervisor that needs to update numbers.
Where I work, they have a dedicated development staff, and the projects they roll out are very well planned, organized, and managed. Unfortunately though, there are some things the operation needs and wants in short order that would help them perform better and they can't wait for a full 2 year project plan and all that. That's where the fun happens. It used to be tasked to some poor supervisor or someone that might be a hobbyist programmer in an area to create something in Access to get them their numbers or perform the task of training someone... yes, they would train people with Access because that's all they had to work with.
Recently though, there has been an upstart of a group that handles "mid-level" operational reporting tools and rapid development tasks in order to take on these one man projects and try to standardize them across the company instead of having 80 odd programs in different states and countries doing the same things (frankly wasting time solving the same problems all areas face.)
Is it the best solution? Probably not. But it's been working. The "start up sub group" has been able to quickly roll out applications (web apps in this case) to the field so they can perform their job easier and more efficient. If they run across something that requires more development, it's pushed up the chain to the dedicated development/systems teams to do a corporate assessment. There's something to be said for project planning and all that, but sometimes it's ungainly slow and cumbersome. In this small group, the developer is usually tasked with talking to the requester, laying out the design and functionality of the application with the user and coding it up on the framework in place. Granted, it's a lot of work on the developer, but they gain a knowledge of what the field needs and can better layout what that niche of the company needs to do it's job in a rather short period of time where the common standard project time line for the dedicated team of developers would take way too long to gather that knowledge, lay out a plan, and code the application.
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:5, Insightful)
My first guess is ......
That being the main problem with this entire topic: He has not provided enough information about what his company does for us to come up with a sensible answer.
I can think of some cases where forcing everyone to use the same tools would be ridiculous. I can also think of some cases where it would make sense. Without knowing how big his company is or having any idea about the longevity of each project or how different each project is we have no idea what makes more sense for them.
As far as we know he is talking about two teams of 3 developers who interchange between similar projects on the same web application. He also might be talking about a company of 1000 developers for hire work in long term projects where each team develops an entirely different application. In the latter standardising on a single language would probably be impossible.
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:4, Interesting)
You really work for lines in your CV?
I should add "hitting my boss because he had complaints about my smoking habits and some nasty phrases about my mom" then.
But seriously, if I do some work, I make sure I do it for the best of my abilities, and noone can say anything about that. Personal differences are another matter, and they usually arise when my would-be boss doesn't like what I do when I'm done with my work at that time.
For some reason, my bosses seem to think that if I don't appear as working at a particular point in time, I'm not working at all.
Back to your comment, I really do care about productivity, it's just that I don't define it as "appears as though he has something to do, always".
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:4, Interesting)
You should take a job-related book with you to your smoke breaks. Crack it open whether you read it or not. Or some kind of PDA.
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Re:Choose them all under one. (Score:4, Funny)
Or some excel printouts, with graphs. Vaguely scribble and circle bits of them at random. And make it so the lines are always trending up.
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Answers to your 3 questions (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Slashdot will think that you should be able to use anything you damn well please as long as it's Open Source.
2. Yes, especially if the people who sign you paycheck tell you that's what you have to do.
3. Maybe. A lot depends on how well the team is managed.
Re:Answers to your 3 questions (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Slashdot might as well think that you should be able to use anything interchangeable enough not to make a difference in the long run. Emacs vs. vi comes to mind.
2. The people who sign the paychecks hired you because you know what you're doing, not to be an interchangeable code monkey in need for micromanagement. (Right? If not, RUN!)
3. If you don't "force" the devs to use tools they hate, this is not an issue. If you do, there is no "time saved" to speak of, and management can do nothing about it.
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Re:Answers to your 3 questions (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The people who sign the paychecks hired you because you know what you're doing, not to be an interchangeable code monkey in need for micromanagement. (Right? If not, RUN!)
2. If you don't "force" the devs to use tools they hate, this is not an issue. If you do, there is no "time saved" to speak of, and management can do nothing about it.
Whether your statements are true really depends on whether you are running a software company as a business or as a private playground for developers. Micromanagement is bad, but no management is worse. In my experience it pays off to compromize, i.e. to give developers some freedom but at the same time subjecting them to certain rules. Leaving a bunch of software nerds 100% free to do what ever they want is a major mistake. I have had dealings with companies that failed to effectively supervise their developers and the result was usually a mess. The developers working on different components of major projects went for radically different technologies that often caused major problems or even turned out to be partly or even completely incompatible. Often they seemed to do this simply because they had never written anything in, say, Ruby and wanted to try it out. There seemed to be no concern for whether Ruby was actually the best choice for their project. Not that there is something essentially wrong with Ruby, sometimes it just isn't the best choice. Another wonderful side effect of this policy is that you end up with a portfolio of products written in an ever growing set of languages: java, .net, perl, php, ruby, c, c++ and delphi..... It's kind of like a hauling company having a fleet of 30 trucks where no two were made by the same manufacturer because they have a policy of letting the truckers choose their rides at will. There are benefits to be had from standardization of equipment. In the end even a Software company is a business and it will benefit from standardizing on certain tools and languages. It minimizes lead-in time for new developers, makes it easier to replace developers who have left the company.... the list goes on.
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Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:5, Insightful)
Management invariably tries to standardize the wrong tools because they have no idea how software development works. They think in terms of the IDE as "the tool set" rather than the MAKE or ANT build systems, compiler toolchain, version control, and other behind the scene tools.
If you want the standardization to go well, make sure the build tools are standardized. Once anyone can build the project (IDE or no), it won't matter what the "standard" IDE is. (Unless it's Rational Application Developer. That's just a piece of shit right there. Universally agreed upon.) Developers will still download their own editor or IDE tools to make themselves happy without disturbing the greater whole.
Re:Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:5, Informative)
That combination is better than just free as in beer... it's also free as in free speech! Subversion, Ant, and CruiseControl are all Free Software.
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Re:Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that's logical, exactly the right answer. They'll never buy it though, unless you can write book about what you just said, and invent a catchy new buzzword to describe the concept. Something like Dev 2.0..., or better maybe an acronym, like PEAT
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Re:Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:4, Funny)
Developer Centric Individualized Standardisation.
Look forward to my upcoming book on the subject:
Development 2.0 : Practical Perfection With The "DeCISt" Paradigm in the Enterprise.
Seriously, a year or so ago, a friend of mine and I were just about ready to write a book about the benefits of procedural programming in C using a simple text editor, and then just buzzword the shit out of it and hype it up like Xtreme Programming and such, and pretend it was a new revelation. For the life of me, I can't remember what we were going to call it. Something like the Post Object Paradigm, or Modern Objectless Development, or some such shit. We would have made millions if we weren't lazy asses.
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Re:Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:4, Funny)
I was making fun of extreme programming. Honestly, I don't have a problem with it. It is just one of those things that, if you investigate the core philosophy, is all eminently reasonable, and is something that evolved to address real world concerns. OTOH, if you move beyond the core philosophy and talk to some of the narrow minded ideologues and idiotic buzzwordologists, then extreme programming can move from something perfectly reasonable to being something perfectly in need of being made fun of! :)
My only real issue is all the hype that surrounds "XP" and "agile development" such that some of the virtue gets lost of the noise of "exciting" and "new." If I could pull off that kind of buzz for Xtreme Classless Proceduralism, I'm sure that PHB's everywhere would be lining up around the block to learn new and exciting ways to force their developers to upgrade to my special 800 dollar version of vi, so that they can code in new and exciting C.
Which reminds me, I also need to figure out someway to write a book about a paradigm called "Write Once, Run Once" to promote development of incredibly unreliable code.
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Re:Standardize the RIGHT tools (Score:5, Insightful)
Project management tools: version control, bug tracking tools, etc. Are important, and should be mostly standardizable without impacting upon any project.
These are supporting tools, but your version control system is not a development tool like your compiler or IDE is. (It's more of a development tool like Visio for making your UML diagrams or Word for making your documentation is).
Adjunct tools are all readily standardizable, and useful to standardize (everyone uses Visio or uses DIA, or Poseidon -- so everyone can read your files), just stay away from the language the code is written in and the exact tool used to type it.
It makes sense, even to use a common repository for all projects, and one private web site to track bugs for all projects (divided into their own categories/administrative domains, of course)
Just don't standardize on windows-specific tools like VSS or SG if platform development is mixed (I.E. some software needs to run on other platforms), or use version control that has to be IDE-integrated.
Unfortunately, many developers rely on their IDE like a crutch and need it to be able to build things for them.
They are particularly fond of tools like Visual Studio that try to do everything, even decide how building will work
Build processes are inherently project-specific and depend on which files need to be compiled and which libraries need to be linked.
Builds are not much more standardizable than choice of language.
But should be standardized for each project. I.E. Everyone working on a project using language X, should use the same compiler, so developers will have consistent results.
And there should be standardized (non-conflicting) build tool installs for various projects that use build tool X, so again, there are consistent results when different developers attempt to run a build on their workstation.
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A gross misunderstanding of the process (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, and while they're at it, let's give all the mechanics just one size of wrench and screwdriver.
This policy shows a gross misunderstanding of the engineering process, and of what computer science is. Any computer scientists worth his/her salt should be expected to learn whatever tools are needed to get the job done. And conversely, each project team should be free to evaluate the best tools to get each job done.
It's not unreasonable to have guidelines and even strong recommendations; for example, a company could discourage csh scripts in favor of bash because of the known problems with csh. But to think that C/C++ can substitute for a scripting language or vice versa, or that even a language like FORTRAN has no purpose, completely misses the point.
When I was at Stanford, we got ZERO units for learning different programming languages. We were EXPECTED to learn C, C++, Lisp, and about a dozen other languages, before we could call ourselves computer scientists. If anyone thinks that limiting a computer scientist's choice of tools is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
Re:A gross misunderstanding of the process (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, and while they're at it, let's give all the mechanics just one size of wrench and screwdriver.
I am so sick of this analogy, as it's completely inaccurate. Programming languages, at least full featured languages, are a whole set of tools, not a single tool. Comparing Java to C is more like comparing Craftsman to Snap-on, different brands of tools but they can both be used to do the same thing. If you can give you mechanics a single tool that can be used in all their tasks, like a sonic screwdriver, then do it. If the language isn't full featured, or cover all your needs, then don't use it.
And conversely, each project team should be free to evaluate the best tools to get each job done.
This is exactly what you need to do if you want to guarantee that you have to continue with the team you have or hiring nothing but experienced senior developers. Keep the number of tools simple and you can have a small number of leads and many interns to do the same amount of work with a much higher over all quality and considerably less cost.
If anyone thinks that limiting a computer scientist's choice of tools is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
If anyone thinks that hiring computer scientist's to do anything other than research and theory is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
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Re:A gross misunderstanding of the process (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like Stanford taught things the right way.
Just last week, I was thinking about this. The University of Texas (where I went) had a similar philosophy when I was there as well; the goal was to teach the concepts and how to learn new languages. We groused about it incessantly at the time, but looking back over how my career has progressed and how I've been able to adapt to new technology, it was absolutely the right education.
Consider this: At the time I started my Freshman year in college, the Fall of 1991...
The most basic elements of what we develop with today didn't even exist, and those that did exist were in nascent forms that they today barely resemble. Even ANSI C got a major update 8 years afterwards with the C99 standard -- which is nine years ago.
But wait, there's more!!!
When I was in grad school at UCSD, I took a class on Software Evolution. The instructor would give us a project, and every couple of weeks ask us to make changes to the project as our next assignment, to expand the project's capabilities. We were given the freedom to choose whatever means we wanted to pursue this goal. The initial assignment was to generate a simple web page.
A friend of mine chose to use Perl. I asked him if he knew Perl, and he said, "No, but I can learn how in the time it takes to implement this in any other language, and with each new assignment I can just write a whole new script."
He was the only one in the class to finish every assignment.
The moral of the story is not that Perl is something wonderful, but rather that Perl was the appropriate tool for the job and that learning how to use the appropriate tool takes less time than using a tool you're familiar with that doesn't work so well. Consider chopping down an overgrown pine tree. If you know how to use a hand saw but not a chainsaw, the guy who uses a chainsaw is going to hack the tree down in less time regardless of whether he has to read the manual to learn how to use it. (And then after that, he'll know how to use a chainsaw on other trees, too.)
So... yeah.
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Re:A gross misunderstanding of the process (Score:4, Insightful)
Standardization of software development tools and languages has to do with optimizing the process at a higher level than most developers are used to.
The point here is to optimize the way a whole company (or at least a whole division) produces software:
Standardized support tools (build tools, version control, etc) mean that there will be things like shared project templates and a higher average level of expertise with the tools being used (if everybody uses the same tools, there will be more experts with those tools around).
Standardized languages mean that in-house developed libraries and frameworks are feasible and can be reused all across the company in many of the projects being developed.
Standardization in tools and languages also increases predictability of results - everybody, including managers, gains a better grasp on how long it takes to do something since they have a lot more experience using that set of tools and languages.
Standardization also means that it's a lot easier to find and train replacements for those that leave or (even more important if you're a developer) those that progress in their career to new tasks and responsibilities and don't want to be stuck "maintaining the software I did 4 years ago".
When you are working as a part of a team you work with the team and don't just go away and do your own thing 'cause you know best and everybody else is an asshole.
To use your automotive metaphor (this is ./ after all):
- If you work in a garage you get many different cars with many different problems so you use whatever tools are appropriate for the task at hand.
- If you work in a car factory (say Porsche), you use the specialized tools you are assigned to use for the tasks you're supposed to do. This applies even if you're one of the designers of a new car - you don't just go out using your own CAD application 'cause you think you know best.
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Start sending out resume... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure we could all make due building every road out of steal, but it would certainly be a little expensive, because if we need to build everything out of the same material because all road builders need to be interchangeable, than we would never be able to build a bridge over say San Francisco Bay with using stones...
Re:Start sending out resume... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Start sending out resume... (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing worse for it is hiring "managment consultants" to "streamline" the process.
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
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Re:Start sending out resume... (Score:4, Funny)
Whoosh.
BOB SLYDELL
So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and
you bring them down to the software engineers?
TOM
That, that's right.
BOB PORTER
Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the
specifications directly to the software people, huh?
TOM
Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with
customers.
BOB SLYDELL
You physically take the specs from the customer?
TOM
Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.
BOB SLYDELL
Ah.
BOB PORTER
Then you must physically bring them to the software people.
TOM
Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.
BOB SLYDELL
Well, what would you say... you do here?
TOM
Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so
the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at
dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS
WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Office-Space.html [imsdb.com]
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it's not terrible if done in moderation (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in academia, where just about the opposite prevails: you can use whatever you damn well please, and generally PhD students don't even get that much in the way of hard-and-fast rules from their advisors, so they use what they please too, as do half the research scientists and post-docs. The results of that are why companies consider standardization.
The main problem is that, while experimenting with lots of languages and using languages perfectly suited to a particular task is nice, doing it too freely makes for a nightmare if you ever want to combine things, have a programmer of one system help out on another project, etc.---just the sorts of issues that prompted this question.
My current research project's codebase, partly inherited, partly pasted together from components that were lying around the lab, and partly of my own doing, using nine languages, as a result of everyone using whatever seems like the right tool for each job. There's a C backend for one part and a C++ backend for another part; an AI component in Lisp; some GUI and glue-y stuff in Python; other GUI stuff and some other AI stuff in Java; some text-munging scripts in Perl; some number-crunching in Ocaml; some parsing and god knows what else in Haskell; and some other AI in an in-house language that compiles to Java.
Now some of those tools were indeed exactly the right tool for the job. But this is not ideal to maintain, and it's nearly impossible to ship to anyone who isn't me in a way that a mere mortal could get the code built and running.
Oh, and there's some other projects in the group that use C#, and one that uses Scheme, if I want to go for double-digits...
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It depends on how varried your projects are (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on how varied your projects are; if all you ever do (as a company) is produce slight variations on a single theme, it should go fine. If you need to develop everything from hard real time embedded apps to web 2.7 social networking goo, you're screwed.
--MarkusQ
No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where developers must interface, such as coding style, source code repository or corporate blog? Yes, it makes sense. I may not *like* a coding style, but if management at a large company told us to use one, I'd at least understand why. IDE? OS? Compiler (except for the one that actually builds the product)? No, NO, NO!!! A thousand times, no! Why? Because you're just going to stifle creativity.
Management point: IT needs to work on the same thing. Counterpoint: IT is often clueless. Developers can almost always troubleshoot their own systems.
Management point: Ensures software licensing compliance. Counterpoint: None really, they kind of have you there; but since most companies have a policy against installing unlicensed software anyway, punishing developers by forcing them into a cookie-cutter workstation isn't going to solve that problem.
Management point: puts them all on the same page, builds team. Counterpoint: It makes development less a "collegial" environment, where diverse ideas are explored, and more of a "command" environment. Developers are notoriously intolerant of following orders simply for orders sake.
Newbie developers coming right out of school might not mind being told to use all the same tools; but experienced developers might feel otherwise. If you want to annoy experienced developers who know all the ins-and-outs of their particular toolset, then go right ahead. Then, wonder why nobody comes up with new ideas, makes comparative observations of one system against another, or develops an alternative approach that goes beyond the status quo. Wonder why people who don't drink the kool-aid on your particular toolchain leave for greener pastures. Wonder why you don't have any in-house expertise on any other system when your chosen flavor is no longer sweet.
Re:No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless they all operate on the same meta-data the foreign tool is out. My boss thinks the same way you do, every one is allowed to use any damn tool they feel like, with absolutely no bounds.
I work with a guy who insists on using Visual Studio, as nearly as I can tell, because he's unaware that there is a multi-tab text editor outside of VS. So, everytime I have to take over a project from him, I have to go figure extract what files are being build, and then port it into the production system, every other developer on the project uses. Because this is such a hassle, the guy will do updates and commits on an interval measured in months, where as every other developer does them on intervals measured in hours. So along with everything else we have to deal with, when he commits his code, he generally will blow away months of someone elses work because he can't be bothered with learning how resolve conflicts, and it'll never integrate cleanly. We'll spend a week just trying to undo all the damage he'd done. All because he can't be bothered to use the same toolchain everyone else on the team does. It also means I have no commit history, no commit comments, and nothing I cause use to do research on to figure out how the software evolved.
Because he uses Windows, Visual C++ compiler, on an AMD 2.8GHz machine and does all his profiling, it's trivial to go make improve his codes performance on Linux, g++, on an 1Ghz Via C3 (which is the deployment environment for the embedded system). As he works on the single most performance critical aspect, it's more then a bit frustrating. Especially as the code has extreme and unnatural things done to it to the parts that are slow under his one off development environment, but those aren't the parts that are slow under production.
For things like Java, I've learned the hard way, that we'll only have one setup of meta-data. It's terrible frustrating to have all of the corporate standards setup correctly in say Eclipse, (checkstyle, code generation, auto-formatter, unit testing, test coverage, find bugs, PMD, warning levels, etc, etc), and then have some jackass continually commits code that upon contact with a properly configured environment will be flagged as a violation of the coding guidelines, or generates huge numbers of warnings if only he'd turn on the already agreed upon warnings.
I've learned, that there is one set of production meta-data used to do a production build. While we can argue over how we maintain that set of meta-data, once that decision is made all tools must use that meta-data directly (they can translate it from one format to another, as long as it does that automatically, like Maven can for some IDE's). So if we use Eclipse, you can use any tool you want, as long as it reads Eclipse meta-data. If we choose Ant, then you can use any tool you want, as long as it does Ant meta-data. If we choose GNU Build system, you can use any platform and compiler you want, as long as it uses the GNU build system. The one hard and fast rule I have for the meta-data is that it must be possible to build from a command-line in an automated way. It can be obscenely difficult to do (like say Eclipse), but it must be possible.
I've generally learned that anybody who won't agree to use a consistent set of tools with the rest of the team, is a prima dona and is in dire need of a lesson. Yes, I know my toolchain stone cold (gcc/g++, and Eclipse). However, if there is a consensus to use a different toolchain, I'll learn a second one stone cold. I've learned tons about bash, gcc, g++, the Borland compilers, Visual Studio, a number of embedded compilers, Watcom, XCode, the NeXT Objective C IDE, NetBeans, Eclipse, CVS, SVN, Git, Monotone, Arch, Mercurial, Ant, Maven, GNU Make, GNU Auto{conf,make}/libtool, SCons, and probably a couple of others I've forgotten (I've known bits and pieces of several scripting languages, but none well enough write home about). I've learned the best practices of them all when I used them. Given m
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Re:No way. (Score:4, Interesting)
You hit on an important point - "developers are notoriously intolerant of following orders simply for orders sake". If all your developers loved CoolToolABC, but then you ordered them to all use CoolToolABC, they would rebel and feel stifled. There's a lot of creativity in software development, and to ignore the psychology of it is a big mistake that I've seen many corporations make.
Parent
It's dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
27 years experience and I've heard this idea before. It is dumb.
2-3 languages- sure. One for gear-head, one for report/data mining at least.
5 languages at the same company is a problem- but 1 language is a problem too.
Better to choose a process than an environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Languages are just details. It's far better for developers to standardize on a set of processes - documentation, as-builts, code review, unit tests, TDD, scrum, FDD ... pick a set of development processes that make sense for your company and project. Some methodologies always make sense - if developers write clear, concise docs and as-builts for their set of coding responsibilities (yeah, right :rolleyes:) then a good developer can pick the code up and run with it regardless of the language.
Language is just syntax. (OK, it's mostly syntax :p) But the primary point is that most developers have had a wide range of language exposure. I don't know Ruby nor Python, but I've done a helluvalota PERL, JavaScript, and C/C++ and it'd be fairly trivial for me to pick up a well documented Python app and maintain or extend it. Just give me a good O'Reilly book. It takes longer to figure out what the actually code is doing than to understand the syntax and semantics anyways.
Two (Score:5, Interesting)
A similar question came up roughly a year ago on slashdot. My recommendation is to chose two: one "scriptish" language (PHP, Python, etc.) and one strong-typed language (Java, Eiffel). C# is sort of a compromise between the two, but marries you to MS (so far), which may bite you in the future like VB6 did.
Does everyone know the same languages? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps your environment is unique, but I've rarely seen an organization capable of moving people around at will, simply because not everyone has the same skill sets. Even within the Web development paradigm, there's always the "SQL guy", the "CSS guy", heck, even the "regex guy" who's been writing Perl since he was a kid. making that guy use Eclipse instead of vim and puTTY seems counterproductive to me, even if you happened to have someone with those skills on each team.
Doom!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Look for another job. When upper management sticks their nose in with the rational that you described, doom is just around the corner. The problem is simple. How do you get the best performance out of your best people? The answer is not: Fit them all into the round hole. The correct answer is: Let them use the best tools possible as they perceive them to be.
Okay, languages need to be standardized, but after that, the environment needs to be perogative of the developer.
Nuff said...
I have mixed feelings.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think that a programmer's tools are sacred and you should basically let people use whatever they feel they are most productive with, but I'm starting to see problems with that, at least in big organizations..
First, IDEs - I've worked on teams where 3 different IDEs were being used by different members of the team - IntelliJ, NetBeans, and Eclipse. It worked fairly well and no real problems came about as a result of the different IDEs. I've also been in training sessions where everyone is using the same IDE except for some crackhead insisting that their IDE is better and that they can't switch to Eclipse even just for the training, and everyone in training has to wait for half an hour why the instructors try to help them figure out why stuff isn't working in their IDE.
Second, platforms/libraries/frameworks - There are really a lot of valid reasons for standardizing the platforms, libraries, and frameworks your organization uses. You have better internal support, can leverage work done by other groups, and training is easier. Being able to switch people around easily is perfectly valid as well - people leave, get promoted, need a break from their project, want to explore different career goals, etc.. Plus, I think it is good to send people off to other projects to learn and share good practices. Having a standard set of tools makes this relatively easy - all you really need to learn on a new project is the business side of things.
That said, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, so it probably makes the most sense to pick a standard set of tools for common project types. If a project needs to deviate from one of those standards, that is fine, but they need to make their case for doing so.
So for full-blown enterprise apps, the standard may be Java EE. For smaller apps, it might be Rails or Grails. For desktop apps, you might mandate .NET. Then if someone says "Hey, it would be cool if we wrote this small app in Python", then they could do it, but they would have to show that the benefits gained by using Python in that scenario would outweigh the costs of using a non-standard platform.
GCC + Make + Emacs (Score:5, Interesting)
Makefiles are text files, and completely tool agnostic. By standardizing on Make, you don't paint yourself into a corner with a single toolchain.
Emacs has editing modes for many languages and file formats. By standardizing on that, you don't paint yourself into a corner, unlike a single language IDE. (Also, those who prefer vi can still use Emacs in viper mode, so Emacs is a more flexible choice than vi for the company).
GCC is a compiler collection, with support for many languages. By standardizing on that, you don't paint yourself into a corner with a single language.
Best of all, these tools don't take up a lot of RAM, so the development machines will be responsive without beefy hardware.
Root cause (Score:5, Insightful)
There is definitely value in having the members of the development team agree to a set of tools around which they can share common experiences and exchange solutions for problems that come up. That's fine. What scares me about your question is that it is driven from above,
The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one group / project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch.
Developers are not plug-compatible interchangeable parts that can be slotted in and out of various projects according to shifting needs. It doesn't matter if they all know exactly the same toolset or not, dropping Jane from the accounting project who has been around for a couple of years in to replace James in the supply-chain project who left because he got married and his wife is taking an internship at a distant hospital and expecting equivalent results demonstrates a vast ignorance of how developers become productive.
Nearly every company's management wants to imagine it can standardize developers for a lot of bad reasons -- because they believe that gives them leverage over someone who has deep domain knowledge and can't easily be replaced with a junior programmer for example. Or they imagine they can save money by buying bulk licenses for a product from a vendor. Beware of management playing golf with software tool vendors, you'll get stuck with some POS for sure.
Perhaps going to management and suggesting that the developers collaborate to nominate a selection of acceptable toolsets from which management can select would work, but that kind of suggestion never seems to be taken very well by the suits.
Solve the right problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I can show you two programs written in Java that are so different that you wouldn't know it was the same language if you found them in the wild. As remarked before, switching languages is almost never the problem.
The problem is that developers in different divisions are not interchangeable like parts in a machine.
Newsflash: developers are not interchangeable.
If you hire and train in a smart way you might get developers that are smart enough to deal with somebody elses messes and that leave messes that can be dealt with by somebody else.
The first thing that a developer will say when he starts at an existing project: "This should have been done differently, using language Y, framework X. This is a pile of shit!" (Y and X varying among developers and over time). Doing everything with language Y and framework X doesn't fix anything though, because they are in constant flux.
Newsflash: projects are not all the same.
If all your projects are the same you should come up with a way to let the business owners roll out variations on the theme and get the hell out of there.
The interesting bit about writing software is to learn the domain and find the programming model that works best there. Then simplify it until you're done.
This is not to say that developers should be allowed to try anything new. Reducing the choice a bit (dare I mention web frameworks?) makes a lot of sense. Eliminating all choice is just plain stupid.
If you dumb down the organization by eliminating evolution of the programming model and robbing the developers of the freedom to do what makes sense, you will see the smartest developers walk first. The next thing you will see is a huge drop in the rate of change in the products and the responsiveness to the market. The last thing you will see is lawyers.
A quote from a friend (Score:5, Insightful)
"Management standardizes that which they do not understand, to relieve them of the responsibility of having to think about it any more..."
dave
Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there are almighty drawbacks. Things aren't nearly as simple as management tend to believe.
However...
That doesn't mean the reverse isn't often true as well.
Just like 95% of drivers know they're in the top 50% of all drivers, I know this'll piss off a lot of indignant engineers who know they're far too smart to fall prey to this...
But, the truth is, a lot of engineers are absolutely terrible at picking the right tool for the job too.
The right tool is not "anything other than the tool I used last time because I know that one has lots of flaws now." Every tool has flaws. There being a devil you know doesn't mean the other option is a blessed saint. It just means you don't know its flaws yet.
I've watched countless engineers choose tool A, decide they hate A and want to use B because it solves X that they didn't like about A... Then decide B does Y badly so they move to C... Then discover C screws Z up but A has a new version that's supposedly much better. And then they repeat... Every time, writing lousy code because a decent tool that's poorly understood is often worse than a bad tool that you understand deeply enough to avoid most of the pitfalls of.
Conversely, the right tool is also not the one that you know and won't put down because you're scared of the learning curve and don't want to look bad compared to other engineers when you're safe and secure in your existing kingdom.
The right tool is also not the one that'll make your resume look really cool and cutting edge. Yes, it's often exciting to learn new skills and they make you look really advanced. Learning tends to have a diminishing rate of return. Say you can learn the first 50% of a language in a month. You can probably learn the next 25% in the next month. Two or three years in, you're hopefully smart enough to still be learning but you're only improving by fractions of a percent of what's out there each month. It's tempting to pick something new and learn 50% of a whole new language... but that doesn't actually make it the right tool.
Engineers also tend to be very bad at understanding what makes the business actually work. Yes, I know there's deep moral righteousness but, here's the interesting thing... if the business can't find anyone in the area to help you ship a product on time because you chose too obscure a tool... if the business goes bust because they're paying too much for trendy skillsets... it's still the wrong tool. If the business isn't in business anymore because the tool ignored financial realities, it's the wrong tool.
In short, there are a lot of ways that engineers tend to make very, very bad decisions about what a good tool is.
Yes, I know you're not one of those engineers. I know bean counters make even worse decisions. I know I need to go to hell for suggesting this.
But the right tool is often a combination of factors. Some engineers tend to get, some engineers tend to be very bad at getting, some managers tend to get, some managers tend to be very bad at getting.
Being open to identifying the flaws in decision making processes and finding ways to make better decisions is how we really get to the point of picking good tools. In some companies, for certain processes, that may mean standardized tools, in others it won't. Smart people are open to all ideas and pick the best from them for each situation.
Re:Depends (Score:5, Interesting)
It's lame to reply to myself, but I forgot something re: development tools.
Don't dictate what your developers use, if it's possible. Case in point: In my current company we are building a VB.NET web application. There are six developers and five of us use Visual Studio, but the tech lead does not, he uses VIM. I was amazed by this, but after seeing him wrangle some text with that thing, I can see the value over an IDE, although I still prefer its warm confines because I've come to rely on the bells and whistles.
BUT, this works only because he has a build system where he does not rely on the VS project files, only the source code, resources, images, etc. The end result is the same as if you had compiled the thing inside Visual Studio, except that you used only the compilers. This is very cool, and while I don't fully understand the build files, I can see how that's a definite advantage. The scripts even pull the source off CVS and everything.
My point I guess is that you shouldn't tie yourself to development tools, if possible. That's just common sense, and at the same time you'll allow developers to use the tools they prefer. That makes for happy developers.
Maybe one of these days I'll try VIM or EMACS, or maybe I'll just stick with the IDE. But at least I know I have the option.
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Re:EPIC FAIL! (Score:5, Funny)
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