How high will Microsoft fly? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?

MSFT 401.14

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Feb 6 9:30 AM EST

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To: Dave who wrote (59892)	7/16/2001 1:25:13 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (3) of 74651

Re: Portability Portability is a surprisingly overrated attribute of software. Almost all software written in the past twenty years is portable in the sense that only a small percentage of the code in any large program has any hard architectural or OS dependencies. Which platforms a vendor supports these days is largely an issue of target market size and support costs rather than any technical effort involved. This is a perfect example of the real differences between programming in the large vs. in the small. There are certain fixed costs associated with maintaining and supporting a separate distribution of any product which for large programs significantly dominate overall project costs to a degree that the costs of the port per se are not relevant to the business decision of which platforms to target. The reason for this is simple. The internal structures necessary to support large-scale programming of necessity dictate that the program be organized in a modular fashion which makes porting a relatively straightforward proposition. The sections of code in a database such as Oracle, for example, which have architectural or OS dependencies are very localized not because Oracle management presciently planned for portability but rather because there is no other way to viably build and maintain programs of this size. "Spaghetti" may make a fine meal in an Italian restaurant, but it hasn't been on the menu at any successful software company for a very long time. The larger question is not why don't all programs support all platforms but rather why so many platforms exist at all? This is especially true in the Unix world since the often hairsplitting differences that separate the various proprietary flavors of Unix serve mainly to enhance vendor margins more than anything else.

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