Fwd: [Fwd: Re: Wikipedia criticism about root]

Hi!

Somehow the mail I was replying to did not have roottalk in the Cc:, so my reply to all reached only Andy and Christian (how did I receive the mail at all?!?). Anyway, here's my mail from Friday, and sorry for the delay.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Roland Kuhn <rkuhn_at_e18.physik.tu-muenchen.de>
> Date: 30 June 2006 14:32:40 GMT+02:00
> To: Andy Buckley <andy.buckley_at_durham.ac.uk>
> Cc: cstrato <cstrato_at_aon.at>
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: [ROOT] Wikipedia criticism about root]
>
> Hi Andy!
>
> Thanks for patiently keeping this discussion up! I think it is
> important to have a clear and honest diagnosis of shortfalls in
> current ROOT to be able to tackle them. I've voiced my opinion
> about CINT and debuggability some weeks ago already and I most
> certainly agree with your other technical points. I'd like to add
> another important point for the HEP community, which is user
> experience and data analysis efficiency.
>
> On 29 Jun 2006, at 13:43, Andy Buckley wrote:
>
>>> You are confused whether ROOT is a file format, a stats analyis
>>> system or what. The same could be said about Apple´s HyperCard.
>>> Even Apple itself did not understand the power of HyperCard, but
>>> most users loved it. The same can be said about ROOT.
>>
>> I'm aware that ROOT has many users, but in my experience most do
>> not love it. I mostly hear complaints, exasperation and desire for
>> alternatives from people I work(ed) with who *have* to use ROOT
>> due to experiment rules or similar. In connection with my critique
>> Web page I've had many contact "fan" emails from people I don't
>> know who express the same views. I've also discussed many of the
>> issues I've raised with prominent C++ and OO specialists in the
>> HEP field and the majority have agreed with me and personally
>> choose to avoid ROOT as a result.
>>
> All of my colleagues use ROOT because it simply is the way of our
> experiment. It also works reasonably well and once the analysis
> program is working everyone is happy. But the road to that working
> analysis is often much longer and harder than people imagined in
> the beginning. This starts with the difficulty of having to learn C+
> +, which by no means is a beginner's language and offers more ways
> to shoot yourself in the foot than any other high-level language I
> know of. It is safe to say that our diploma students typically take
> several months before they can work efficiently with the analysis
> environment and during this time the local 'experts' are pestered
> with countless trivial problems which turn out to take quite some
> effort to debug unless they've happened onto the very same problem
> themselves earlier.
>
> One way to improve this situation would be not to expose the C++
> interface to the casual user, but instead recommend that people use
> a higher level and less error prone (think object ownership)
> interface language. Unfortunately I cannot comment on Python due to
> lack of personal experience.
>
> Ciao,
> Roland
>
> --
> TU Muenchen, Physik-Department E18, James-Franck-Str., 85748 Garching
> Telefon 089/289-12575; Telefax 089/289-12570
> --
> CERN office: 892-1-D23 phone: +41 22 7676540 mobile: +41 76 487 4482
> --
> UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because
> that
> would also stop you from doing clever things.
> -Doug Gwyn
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>
>

Ciao,

                     Roland

--
TU Muenchen, Physik-Department E18, James-Franck-Str., 85748 Garching
Telefon 089/289-12575; Telefax 089/289-12570
--
CERN office: 892-1-D23 phone: +41 22 7676540 mobile: +41 76 487 4482
--
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that
would also stop you from doing clever things.
	-Doug Gwyn
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GS/CS/M/MU d-(++) s:+ a-> C+++ UL++++ P+++ L+++ E(+) W+ !N K- w--- M 
+ !V Y+
PGP++ t+(++) 5 R+ tv-- b+ DI++ e+++>++++ h---- y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------










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