Subject: Re: corba or sockets? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 03 Nov 2000 02:17:46 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3182206666752841@naggum.net> * Jon S Anthony <jsa@synquiry.com> | You either didn't understand this part before or for some reason | actually believe that even with this piece considered the point made | still makes little to no sense. I considered it a fairly unintelligent point to make. It is a given that we do not set out to waste resources. If you have to argue against people who do, that is certainly not my problem, but I find it oddly amusing to watch people who make such assumptions about others, as the only place this acquired stupidity can grow is where there is utter disregard for technical decisions. | I believe my view of analyzing the tradeoffs of "build vs buy" in | this area and makeing choices based on firm technical requirements | and value added is exactly the correct way to proceed in such cases. Of course. The interesting question is, however, what would make you change your mind, not what makes you convinced you are right. for all I know or care, you could be psychologically impelled to defend your choice and work hard to rationalize it after the fact. | Perhaps a major difference here is that your business is not product | centered/oriented, whereas ours is. Another fairly unintelligent point. The question is which products, if this makes an interesting distinction, which I don't think it does. I think the explanation for our differences in view (and the reason you are not really listening) is that you seem to be venture capital funded, while we're making and spending our own money and can afford research that does not contribute to the first quarter bottom line. This is one of the reasons I'm working for a very solid company and have rejected golden-edged job offers from venture capital-funded pies in the sky. I don't need bonuses or stock options to enjoy my work here, and I do see the hoping for that big cash hand-out as a huge misfeature where it is offered the employees. I do not play the lottery or bet on horses, either. We have a product that sells well, has significant growth potential, and I'm free to do whatever I think can contribute to that growth, including going away for a year to do weird stuff that they trust me implicitly to be good for the company, work on and with Common Lisp, etc. Consequently, I find your attitude both condescending and ignorant at the same time. We live in a time when information technology is seen as magic by people who have only figured out that there is gold somewhere, but not how to find it or encourage anybody to find it. I have extreme distaste for venture capital in such an ignorant climate. If you are indeed venture capital-funded and have chosen CORBA because you think you'll avoid some expenditures tha would scare your investors and leave you stranded, I'd have to put your analysis in the "play it safe" category, rather than "play it intelligently, long range", and I am no longer impressed with your choice of CORBA and what you claim it does for you. Simply put: I have come to doubt that you have the resources to make intelligent choices, but have to make choices based on insufficient data and cannot afford to go wrong. Instead of being able to afford to go wrong with your own money, a venture capitalist keeps a lot of people on a taut leash and while he can afford to go wrong quite often to make it big on a few, each of his "puppies" have to show early signs of success or be wasted. This isn't _investment_ in my view, it's playing the lottery with other people's jobs and brains. Lotteries don't do it for me. I find no thrill in accidents. #:Erik -- Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One? -- George W. Bush