The subject line no doubt sounds like heresy in some quarters, but I have my reasons. Software developers typically get pretty fast workstations with multicore processors, lots of memory, big displays (and/or multiple displays), etc. It makes sense from a productivity standpoint. The problem is that in many cases it disconnects them from their user base.
Case in point: I recently downloaded the (free) academic version of CPLEX Optimization Studio 12.2 from IBM and installed it on my home PC. My home PC is a one-lung eMachines box running Win XP (and hence a gaggle of defensive programs -- antivirus, firewall, etc.). I do "serious work" on other, faster machines (running Linux), but this one is good enough for handling mundane chores, including some programming. I have both the Eclipse and Netbeans IDEs on it (sorry Eclipse fans, but so far I haven't found any Eclipse tools for building GUIs that match Netbeans).
So I'm looking for the documentation for CPLEX 12.2. In past versions, this would be some combination of HTML files, PDFs and (on Windows) CHM (Windows help) files. In the latest version, though, they've taken a different route. The Start menu has links to various help entries, but they all point to the same thing -- they launch the help component of OPL's IDE. In other words, to look up anything, I have to launch a stripped/modified version of Eclipse, which can take between one and two minutes on my PC. (After the first launch, subsequent launches go faster.) Between the IDE and the instance of Java it runs on, it eats upwards of 130MB of RAM, which seems like a pretty big footprint for a help browser, particularly if I've got a programming IDE going (both Eclipse and Netbeans run on Java themselves), a web browser and maybe an e-mail client open, etc. I have to wonder whether the developers would have gone with an IDE-only help system (no separate HTML or PDF docs, no CHM files) if they'd been forced to use it themselves on a system like mine.
There may be a lesson here for OR people, too. I think sometimes we over-engineer solutions (I know I'm prone to this) because we're comfortable with specifying mutation rates for genetic algorithms or deciding whether to use dual simplex or barrier algorithms. In our case, the key is not so much to "walk in the user's shoes" by living with the user's resources so much as to put ourselves in the user's head and see how much of what we're putting in front of them would generate a big "huh??".
Monday, September 6, 2010
2 comments:
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Paul, thanks for the constructive criticism. All aspects of the product, including the documentation, go through evolutionary steps that sometimes involve tradeoffs. In the case of the documentation for CPLEX Optimization Studio 12.2, Eclipse is used in order to improve the integration of various parts that go into the completed package, and to fit in with standards for IBM software as a whole. We think that the presentation of the content is improved overall, but the cost in terms of overhead is recognized and remains the subject of discussion and analysis here.
ReplyDeleteI can suggest a couple of workarounds. One is to use the online version of these docs, found at
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cosinfoc/v12r2/index.jsp
Viewing through a browser might take less memory than you are seeing, and it has the same content and functionality. Of course that's not an option if you are disconnected from a network. Online availability of our documentation set has been a longtime wish by many users and we're glad to be able to offer it at last.
The other option is one that a colleague has told me about. (I'm hardly expert in Eclipse.) Copying the doc plugins to your Eclipse plugins directory would make the help directly available in your Eclipse IDE. For CPLEX, you could copy the ilog.odms.cplex.help_12.2.0.bXXX directory from CPLEX_Studio122\opl\oplide\plugins to eclipse\plugins .
I hope these suggestions help. Thanks again, Paul.
John: Thanks for the informative comment. The online docs are a definite plus, and I applaud the decision to make them available. The idea about the Eclipse plugin will likely work, but if I'm chugging away in Netbeans and open my copy of the Eclipse IDE to get to the docs, I suspect my PC will go on strike.
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