This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Where's that cluestick again? Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

I see that Information Week is quoting Gartner on what's coming up in software development:

Automation and visualization are a necessity for mainstream companies that aren't necessarily sophisticated users of IT, says Michael Blechar, research director in the app-development group at market researcher Gartner. "Although they're able to do simple kinds of Java and .Net things well, when it comes to the most complex stuff, they're failing miserably," he says. "Those companies are finding that the only way they can use less-sophisticated developers to build more-sophisticated Java and .Net applications is through the use of visualization and code automation."

I wonder if they recall this table from Capers Jones - scroll down a bit, and note that Java is at level 6. Now scroll up - see where C++ is? All that forward motion to get nowhere. Since C# is Java in MS clothing, we can slot that at 6 as well. Now scroll down to Smalltalk, and ponder the number you see there. Now go back to the Gartner quote, and recall their brilliant advice about "putting Smalltalk into maintenance mode".

After you digest all of that, have a look at Frank Hayes' article - the top part where he lists project failure results:

Department of Corrections: Last month in this space, I reported on The Standish Group's most recent Chaos survey. I said that only 28% of IT projects succeed, 18% are canceled, and 51% are "challenged" -- seriously late, over budget and lacking expected features. Some readers wrote in to point out that the numbers don't add up: 28% plus 18% plus 51% makes only 97%.

They're right. I botched the numbers. That 51% comes from 2003. This year, 54% of U.S. IT projects fell into the challenged category.

Yeah, the numbers were wrong. But at least they weren't ridiculous -- or worse.

Yes, a lot of that is management failure - of which a not insignificant part is "let's rewrite all of our (working) software in (insert current fad language here)". A ton of that was aided and abetted by those bright folks over here.