M
Michael Griffin
In reply to Kevin Cooper: I don't see what R&D has to do with language standards. Few if any of the vendors are doing any R&D on programming languages.
I believe that the real problem with this ongoing situation is that customers are losing a lot more from it in wasteful duplicated training and lost productivity than vendors are gaining from locking in customers. This is a net economic loss, not just a re-distribution of revenue.
Automation software is stuck in the equivalent of what was the early 1960s for the computing industry and will remain there until some very deep rooted problems are addressed in this industry. Every automation project involves re-inventing the same wheels over and over again in different proprietary languages. The development of specialised re-usable libraries and techniques which have been the key to advancement in computer programming is not happening in PLC programming because there are no common languages to express them in. The shear wastefulness of it all is appalling.
I would have to say that given the current situation, even a bad standard that was supported by everyone would be better than no standard at all.
I believe that the real problem with this ongoing situation is that customers are losing a lot more from it in wasteful duplicated training and lost productivity than vendors are gaining from locking in customers. This is a net economic loss, not just a re-distribution of revenue.
Automation software is stuck in the equivalent of what was the early 1960s for the computing industry and will remain there until some very deep rooted problems are addressed in this industry. Every automation project involves re-inventing the same wheels over and over again in different proprietary languages. The development of specialised re-usable libraries and techniques which have been the key to advancement in computer programming is not happening in PLC programming because there are no common languages to express them in. The shear wastefulness of it all is appalling.
I would have to say that given the current situation, even a bad standard that was supported by everyone would be better than no standard at all.