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cost of change

Bjorn Pettersen BPettersen at NAREX.com
Tue Jul 24 16:10:09 EDT 2001 
> From: Galen Swint [mailto:hcsgss at texlife.com]
> 
> Has anyone tried to figure out how much changes to Python 
> cost? The way I
> figure it, it goes something like this:
> 500,000 Python programmers
> $20/hr
> 3 hrs to port *all* needed code
> Thats $30 *million*, and all those numbers are surely low -- 
> especially the
> time to port.  I can't imagine if you're using third party 
> packages and have to
> wrangle with all their code yourself.
> I've been programming with Python only two months, and I've 
> already gone
> through part of the 1.5 to 2.1 upgrade, and it cost several 
> hundred dollars in
> salary simply because pickling doesn't port up versions.  (I 
> know that's
> documented, but it's still crazy not to have a pickly that 
> works across
> versions).
> There are other hidden costs to breaking a language with 
> every upgrade. Two
> come to mind - first, people like me, who thought they liked 
> it, now don't want
> to do anything long term in it, and second, no one can afford 
> to spend time on
> optimizations because the structure and code they are trying 
> to optimize keeps
> shape shifting.
> If you're going to change it, fine. *BUT*, do the world a 
> favor and be sure
> that *any* change which breaks existing code carries a new 
> major version number
> (PEP0238 clearly warrants a Python 3.0 designation) .
> Galen

$20/hr? I think it's time to renegotiate <wink>

-- bjorn
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