CCL: Filters

 Sent to CCL by: "Perry E. Metzger" [perry^piermont.com]
 "Konstantin Kudin konstantin_kudin||yahoo.com"
 <owner-chemistry!A!ccl.net> writes:
 >  In heated discussions like this it helps a bit to understand the
 > realities of producing a polished software package. As such, "The
 > Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks is highly recommended as a good
 > introduction.
 >
 >  Here is a relevant piece from the book review taken from
 > { http://www.glenmccl.com/misc_005.htm }
 >
 > "A program is something you might quickly put together in a few hours
 > or days or weeks. But to take the additional two steps of coming up
 > with a programming system or programming product is a lot of additional
 > work, on the order of 3X as Brooks describes it. Each of these steps is
 > independent, therefore Brooks talks about a 9X ratio of cost between a
 > program and a programming systems product."
 >
 >  Now, the important question is who is going to cover the 8/9th (or
 > even only 2/3rds) of the total development cost of a highly integrated
 > package. Somehow no grants usually cover such efforts ...
 That is why Linux does not exist -- because it is impossible for a
 large piece of software to be developed in this manner.
 This is also why gcc, which is far larger than ANY computational
 chemistry package ever built and far more complicated, doesn't exist.
 This is also why PyMol doesn't exist -- because it is far too
 difficult for computational chemistry software to be written in an
 open source manner.
 Perry