ALICE Off-line beg‘98

• Small(er) (LHC) collaboration

  • Cannot afford several development lines (read my lips)
  • Must reuse code

• Software and Physics are one single group

  • Use programs available and working now
  • Minimise the legacy-code-to-be

• IT/LCB/R&D official line was not ready

  • Only working framework: FORTRAN + ZEBRA +PAW

• Users were not (yet all) speaking OO

  • Split into “dinosaurs”, “prophets” and “lost users”