Management decission support

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Bernd Johannes wrote:
> I would like to see some kind of management decission support on the official
> web site for scala.
> The "enterprise" section lists some success-stories which is very good. But
> there should be more.

> Such information would address the obvious management questions:
> - does it save me money?
> - how does it save me money?
> - does it pose a risk to my invest?
> - how can I influence it?
> - is it still around in 5 years?
> and leaves the impression that people in charge for scala understand their
> concerns and needs.

Several recent experiences have also led me towards this conclusion.
Scala.org is aimed at current or potential scala programmers. But
there is another important audience less well addressed: managers and
purse-string holders - people who have no interested in programming
Scala, but manage people/projects where Scala or related technology is
an option for consideration.

Here in Melbourne, Aus, Ruby & JRuby appear to be making huge inroads
into Java's (the language) market share of dev projects, because its
regarded as more "productive" and "simple" while being "proven", but
Scala is not (yet) taken seriously, save for among a small minority of
fairly elite programmers.

Admittedly, its still early days relative to Ruby, yet Bernd's
suggestions would help, I think.

-Ben

Dear Ben and Bernd,
i've been in the planning stages of a series of workshops on functional programming for the practicing quant. My wife -- who is also Biosimilarity's marketing exec -- had the brilliant idea of functional programming for the analytic manager -- bringing managers of quantitative shops up to speed on 

• Technologies
• Platforms
• Languages
• Concepts

Maybe this could be useful in the context you're talking about, as well.
Best wishes,
--greg

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 8:52 PM, Ben Hutchison <brhutchison [at] gmail [dot] com> wrote:

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Bernd Johannes <bjohanns [at] bacon [dot] de> wrote:
> I would like to see some kind of management decission support on the official
> web site for scala.
> The "enterprise" section lists some success-stories which is very good. But
> there should be more.

> Such information would address the obvious management questions:
>        - does it save me money?
>        - how does it save me money?
>        - does it pose a risk to my invest?
>        - how can I influence it?
>        - is it still around in 5 years?
> and leaves the impression that people in charge for scala understand their
> concerns and needs.

Several recent experiences have also led me towards this conclusion.
Scala.org is aimed at current or potential scala programmers. But
there is another important audience less well addressed: managers and
purse-string holders - people who have no interested in programming
Scala, but manage people/projects where Scala or related technology is
an option for consideration.

Here in Melbourne, Aus, Ruby & JRuby appear to be making huge inroads
into Java's (the language) market share of dev projects, because its
regarded as more "productive" and "simple" while being "proven", but
Scala is not (yet) taken seriously, save for among a small minority of
fairly elite programmers.

Admittedly, its still early days relative to Ruby, yet Bernd's
suggestions would help, I think.

-Ben

--
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
7329 39th Ave SWSeattle, WA 98136

+1 206.650.3740

http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 11:52 PM, Ben Hutchison <brhutchison [at] gmail [dot] com> wrote:

Admittedly, its still early days relative to Ruby, yet Bernd's suggestions would help, I think.

Yes -- looking "professional" will help -- but that first clause is important as well.  We shouldn't fool ourselves: these things do take time.  IMO, Scala today is roughly where Ruby was in 2002 when I first learned it, in terms of mindshare and adoption, even if the language itself is getting more mature than that.  Even Java took a good while before management started taking it seriously...

Greg, let me know, loved the last one and I’ll recommend those to some technically inclined upper management guys here. Excellent idea! A lot of people don’t know the functional world, which is actually simple, given that monads are just monoids in the category of endofunctors, I mean, really!

 

J

 

In the mean time, I had a slide up with an executive-oriented view on scala which tries to address at least a few of the questions below: http://www.slideshare.net/razvanc/why-scalaexecutive-overview

 

cheers

 

From: Meredith Gregory [mailto:lgreg [dot] meredith [at] gmail [dot] com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 4:37 AM
To: Ben Hutchison
Cc: Bernd Johannes; scala-debate [at] listes [dot] epfl [dot] ch
Subject: Re: [scala-debate] Management decission support

 

Dear Ben and Bernd,

 

i've been in the planning stages of a series of workshops on functional programming for the practicing quant. My wife -- who is also Biosimilarity's marketing exec -- had the brilliant idea of functional programming for the analytic manager -- bringing managers of quantitative shops up to speed on 

• Technologies
• Platforms
• Languages
• Concepts

Maybe this could be useful in the context you're talking about, as well.

 

Best wishes,

 

--greg

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 8:52 PM, Ben Hutchison <brhutchison [at] gmail [dot] com> wrote:

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Bernd Johannes <bjohanns [at] bacon [dot] de> wrote:
> I would like to see some kind of management decission support on the official
> web site for scala.
> The "enterprise" section lists some success-stories which is very good. But
> there should be more.

> Such information would address the obvious management questions:
>        - does it save me money?
>        - how does it save me money?
>        - does it pose a risk to my invest?
>        - how can I influence it?
>        - is it still around in 5 years?
> and leaves the impression that people in charge for scala understand their
> concerns and needs.

Several recent experiences have also led me towards this conclusion.
Scala.org is aimed at current or potential scala programmers. But
there is another important audience less well addressed: managers and
purse-string holders - people who have no interested in programming
Scala, but manage people/projects where Scala or related technology is
an option for consideration.

Here in Melbourne, Aus, Ruby & JRuby appear to be making huge inroads
into Java's (the language) market share of dev projects, because its
regarded as more "productive" and "simple" while being "proven", but
Scala is not (yet) taken seriously, save for among a small minority of
fairly elite programmers.

Admittedly, its still early days relative to Ruby, yet Bernd's
suggestions would help, I think.

-Ben

--
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
7329 39th Ave SW

Seattle, WA 98136

+1 206.650.3740

http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com

 

Dear Greg

> i've been in the planning stages of a series of workshops on functional
> programming for the practicing quant. My wife -- who is also
> Biosimilarity's marketing exec -- had the brilliant idea of functional
> programming for the analytic manager -- bringing managers of quantitative
> shops up to speed on
>
> - Technologies
> - Platforms
> - Languages
> - Concepts
>
> Maybe this could be useful in the context you're talking about, as well.

...definitely.
Maybe only for those manager really interested enough in innovation to
actually look at that stuff. But I expect those managers to be the first one
to adopt scala anyway.

When the train of success stories goes on scala will eventually catch the
interest of those which will not care about concepts.

But besides that I enjoyed your last C9 session very much - and I think it's
that kind of stuff which will help much more in terms of adoption than some of
those very elitist comments and disputes sprinkled around scala in the web
these days.

[note: It's not my intention to say that elitist answers and disputes are
inappropriate - it just occurs to me that there is currently an imbalance
between the latter and simple and educative answers on the other hand which
help people along with a given problem pretty simple and fast without
requiring them to take a journey into type or category theory.
Sometimes somebody just want's an answer which is kind of "copy, paste &
modify" to get pressing business done...]

@Ben
> > Here in Melbourne, Aus, Ruby & JRuby appear to be making huge inroads
> > into Java's (the language) market share of dev projects, because its
> > regarded as more "productive" and "simple" while being "proven", but
> > Scala is not (yet) taken seriously, save for among a small minority of
> > fairly elite programmers.

That's it! I think that scala has come to a very crucial point now: it
receives attention and some media coverage. People are watching the community.
And people will notice how the community behaves and evolves.

And as I like scala I wouldn't want to see people being turned away because
they get the notion that scala is overly complicated because "most of the
answers" to simple questions they find... er... well... either make them feel
very stupid or diminished.

And the best way to address this (in my opinion) is a sound base of
introductions, tutorials and that kind of stuff (which is already there to
some extend - which is very good).

And of cause: documentation, documentation, documentation... one of the weaker
spots of scala.

Greetings
Bernd

Just a followup to myself (my... I'm kind of self referential today ;-)

With the announcement of "Scala Solutions" I think scala has taken a huge step
in the right direction. Most "deciders" I know are familiar with business to
business interop but feel uneasy with business to academic interop.

So there is one barriere less to take!

And I am very glad that
> * long term commitment to scala development and support
> * compatibility of coming versions to the current 2.8.0 baseline
> * if appropriate: announcement of upcoming commercial support structures
are adressed now.

Just make sure that visitors from scala-lang get a reference to "Scala
Solutions" (not only in the news-section where the link will eventually
expire).

My best wishes to "Scala Solutions"!

Greetings
Bernd