There was some discussion a while ago (1998 sometime, it's in
dejanews) about a book on software catastrophes which blamed Lisp &
LispMs for a some awful CAD disaster at MCC. I think the chapter in
the book was formerly an article somewhere because I remember reading
it.
I looked at the book when it was in the bookshop and didn't buy it
because of this. Unfortunately I now need to produce a reference to
it, and I can't find it in any obvious web search -- I find lots of
books on software catastrophes but none has enough contents info
online that I can be sure it's the right one.
Can anyone remember the details of this book? Author & some hint as
to title ought to be enough I expect.
Might be best to mail me as it's probably not generally interesting.
Thanks
--tim
Tim Bradshaw <···@tfeb.org> wrote:
> a book on software catastrophes which blamed Lisp & LispMs for a some
> awful CAD disaster at MCC. I think the chapter in the book was
> formerly an article somewhere because I remember reading it.
"Software runaways: lessons learned from massive software project
failures". Robert L Glass. Prentice Hall 1988.
The chapter on the MCC disaster is very sparing in detail (it's a couple
of press stories run together, not an in-depth analysis). It isn't at
all clear what the cause(s) of the problems were. The company is quick
to blame the Lisp vendors and shareholder attitudes to the language, but
doesn't mention its own management of the project:
A number of shareholders have agitated to abandon Lisp all along, he
[John Hanne, Vice-President in charge of the failed project] said.
"There was pressure to do that. Some people never liked Lisp."
... "Lisp hung us out to dry in performance," he added.
The chapter notes that MCC was intending to rewrite the system (750,000
lines) in C, but there is no followup as to how successful the rewrite
was.
--
Gareth Rees
In article <··············@cre.canon.co.uk>,
Gareth Rees <·······@cre.canon.co.uk> writes:
> Tim Bradshaw <···@tfeb.org> wrote:
>> a book on software catastrophes which blamed Lisp & LispMs for a some
>> awful CAD disaster at MCC. I think the chapter in the book was
>> formerly an article somewhere because I remember reading it.
>
> "Software runaways: lessons learned from massive software project
> failures". Robert L Glass. Prentice Hall 1988.
>
> The chapter on the MCC disaster is very sparing in detail (it's a couple
> of press stories run together, not an in-depth analysis). It isn't at
> all clear what the cause(s) of the problems were. The company is quick
> to blame the Lisp vendors and shareholder attitudes to the language, but
> doesn't mention its own management of the project:
With good reason. The lack of a coherent strategy was the primary reason for
the project's failure. That lack was caused by the VP constantly undercutting
the authority of the system architect.
> A number of shareholders have agitated to abandon Lisp all along, he
> [John Hanne, Vice-President in charge of the failed project] said.
> "There was pressure to do that. Some people never liked Lisp."
> ... "Lisp hung us out to dry in performance," he added.
>
> The chapter notes that MCC was intending to rewrite the system (750,000
> lines) in C, but there is no followup as to how successful the rewrite
> was.
>
I don't believe they ever got around to doing it. Support for the project
pretty much dried up at the time Hanne was trying to make Lisp the scapegoat.
It did stumble on for a number of years. About the only thing I can think of
that came out of the project was the CAD Framework Inititive.
Mike McDonald
·······@mikemac.com