Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?

In article <080720051500475312%cbaum981@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Chris Baum <cbaum981@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> In article <ejalbert-1DFB97.10410308072005@localhost>, Eric Albert
> <ejalbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I was trying to guess how many menus File Buddy has. I'm sorry to say
> > that I haven't run File Buddy in a few years, so I didn't have much to
> > go on there. Converting 80-100 menus is probably a day or two (maybe
> > three) of work.
>
> Right, but I beleive Larry's point is still very valid looking forward.
> I don't want to to put words in his mouth, but I think the logic goes
> like this:
>
> 1. Let's say it did take 2-3 days to covert those menus.
>
> 2. There were literally thousands of OS apps moving to OS X over the
> period of time Larry was was referring. Some much larger than File
> Buddy, others smaller. For the sake of argument, let's say it took an
> average of one full work day to convert an app's menu resources to the
> nib format.
>
> 3. 1000 dev apps * 1 man-day to convert the menu resources = 1000
> man-days of effort.
>
> 4. Apple could have invested, let's err on the side against Larry's,
> 30 man-days to properly implement a menu rsrs importer.
>
> 5. Had Apple done 4., the Macintosh developer ecosystem would have had
> 970 man-days of additional effort available for other things to make
> apps better and/or releasing apps faster.
>
> And we're jsut talking menus here.

So if there are, say, 6 engineers on IB (which is probably high - I'm
guessing more like 2-3), at the best of reshuffling, those 30 man days
spend would have taken at least 5 days on the whole IB scheduling
(assuming each engineer could have put in 5 days worth of effort, all at
the same time).

Of course, had they done this, then:

a) some other feature would not have been released
b) other bugs couldn't have been fixed
c) the development tool chain would have slipped, resulting in
slipping of the OS release.

So for (a), instead of this one problem (which, personally, has cost
basically only a hour or two at best, since most things have been
created from scratch rather than dragged over from existing OS 9
codebases), there would be others that potentially more people would
have been impacted with, many of which would have cost far more than 970
man-days.

For (b) some feature wouldn't have been released, requiring everybody
who wanted something like that to spend time re-inventing the wheel.
Again, far more man days for everybody to reinvent, say, some scheme to
have internationalized way of adding help tags to controls (just picking
some feature of IB that may have been cut to make room for that fix).

For (c), slipping tools 5 days means that _all_ developers end up
wasting an extra 5 days (which definitely adds up to more than 970
man-days).



>
> This is an anecdote, but the generalization is that there is a massive
> leveraging effect wrt Apple documentation, dev tools and OS bug fixes.
> Any time Apple can spend X man-hours to improve any of those 3 things,
> it provides additionaly productivity to Mac Dev universe many orders of
> magnitude greater than Apple's effort.

This assumes that they have X "extra" man-hours to spare to work on
them. It's the classic "bugs, features, schedule - pick two" dilemma.
No matter what choices anybody makes in this trade off, there are going
to be people unhappy about their choices. Personally, I'd rather see
those 30 man days being spent to make it possible to directly create a
toolbar in IB instead of having to do most of it in code - I'm guessing
that that has cost the developer community far more time...
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... > I was trying to guess how many menus File Buddy has. ... Converting 80-100 menus is probably a day or two (maybe ... There were literally thousands of OS apps moving to OS X over the ... Had Apple done 4., the Macintosh developer ecosystem would have had ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)
  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... IB has so many bugs I doubt one or two more would make much difference. ... - You're basing this on the assumption that this feature would take one ... to read 'MENU' resources and convert them into menus in a nib. ... Well, the point is that Apple should have loosened the purse strings, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)
  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... > I was trying to guess how many menus File Buddy has. ... Converting 80-100 menus is probably a day or two (maybe ... menus (and to be clear, I'm talking about menus not in a menu bar, as ... So Apple saved a few days of on ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)
  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... >> to read 'MENU' resources and convert them into menus in a nib. ... >> Sure, there are other areas where IB could stand improvement, but Apple ... - And as I understand it, if you're porting an application to Cocoa, ... >> hired another engineer, and done both. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)
  • Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?
    ... > IB has so many bugs I doubt one or two more would make much difference. ... > - You're basing this on the assumption that this feature would take one ... > to read 'MENU' resources and convert them into menus in a nib. ... > haven't had their menus converted to nibs yet. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior)