An economic thought experiment Consider the likely cost of converting a 10M line application from C++ to a different language: • Needing high reliability and high performance • i.e., the kind of system that's critical in some way • A good developer completes N lines of tested production-quality code a day • What is N? 5?, 10?, 100? • Say - optimistically - 2,000 lines/year • Say - optimistically - that a reimplementation (without feature creep) could be 5 million lines • Then it would take 500 developers 5 years to complete the new system • The old system would have to be maintained for those 5 years say by 50 developers • What is the loaded salary of a good developer? • Employee's compensation plus employers' other cost (e.g., buildings, management struc computers) • Say, $500,000 in the US • So, the cost would be 550*5*$500,000 = ~$1,400,000,000 • Vs. ~$125,000,000 for normal maintenance and development • Roughly $1B added cost
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