On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Martijn Tonies <m.ton...@upscene.com>wrote:
> Hello John, > > About 5 years ago, I was asked to write a php app for my department. The >> app keeps track of graduate school applicants to my department at the >> university. The main data elements are the scores each professor gives to >> each applicant. There are only about 400 applicants each year so even with >> all the personal data, scores, transcripts, etc for each student, it's not >> much. for the first 2 years, it was under a meg of data. Well, then the >> selection committee asked me to add something so that if a student e-mailed >> the department a document, say a paper he'd written or a photo of himself, >> or whatever, it could be tacked on to the info they saw about him while >> grading the applicant. >> >> So I said, "Well, there is only going to be maybe 10 or 20 of those a >> year. And even if all 400 applicants submit a PDF of a paper they'd written, >> it would be only 400 docs. 4,000 after 10 years. Yeah, lets just create a >> documents table in the database and store them in mysql." >> >> For the first 2 years, only 2 students sent in documents to attach to >> their application. I figured I'd wasted my time. Then the next year, the >> graduate school changed their web application form to allow students to >> upload documents. "Fine," I said, "My worst case scenario has already come >> true. But, well, this is why you plan for the worst case." >> >> Then they started taking letters of recommendation as PDF documents. In >> fact, they started requiring PDF docs. Each student has 3 to 6 letters of >> recommendation. All in all, I figure we're at about 100 times as many docs >> in our database as I originally expected and about 10x my worst case >> scenario. >> >> I should either be fired or shot. Maybe fired *then* shot. Actually, its >> not as bad as all that. I can pretty easily write a perl script to export >> the docs to files and access them via a network mounted filesystem. After >> all, saving myself 5 hours of work 5 years ago is worth what? -- maybe >> 10hours today? It is amazing how often quick & dirty turns out just being >> dirty in the end. >> > > Not sure what the problem is really... What are you running into? > I think John is just sharing an experience - a lesson learned if you will. With the same spirit in mind, many projects in my work culture begin with a specification of, "Just put up anything so our (internal) users can react to it." Talk about vague. Geesh! However, a senior programmer told me years ago that the life of a programmer is often filled with doing, undoing, and redoing. And not enough appreciation for the work involved. I try to keep that in mind. David
