[CentOS] Was: Re: Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7, is, programming with style
Always Learning wrote: > On Fri, 2011-09-16 at 01:41 +0800, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote: >> On 9/16/11, Always Learning wrote: > It is surprising that some 'computer people' lack a logical insight into > their own work. One 'expert' wrote a single Cobol IF statement spanning > 10 and a bit pages. 60 printed coding lines per page. He thought that > was 'great'. I shuddered and thought it was stupid. Oh, *Ghu*. I left behind at several jobs CICS code that had in it PERFORM 1000-DUMMY-PARAGRAPH THROUGH 1000-DUMMY-PARAGRAPH EXIT WHILE , just to make up for COBOL's shortage of control structures (for/next, while). PL/1 was nicer, and when I got to C, I thought I'd gone to heaven I've seen code like you mention. A number of years ago, I was brought in to program. The place's code was all in perl, which my manager had written. He had most of his EE, and hadn't studied programming... and it showed. I rewrote 600 or 1000 lines of code that were straight line spaghetti into clean, modular stuff, and as I did it, he was clearly studying what I did (I know, because I saw he'd copied one brief date routine into a program he was working on). Remember, even among those who studied, a) half of them were in the bottom of their class, and b) too many are True Believers in the latest programming (not the P word!) paradigm; y'know, recursion is the answer to *everything*, or OO, or > > At the same place, Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam), I was asked NOT to make > my programmes user-friendly and to remove user-friendly features from my > programmes because "If the users see them, they will ask us to put your > user-friendly improvements in our programmes". > > The applications I wrote carried data from one screen to the next screen > and saved the worker having to re-enter the data. NVLS (the airport > authority) staff wanted their old system retained - the user having to > copy onto a piece of paper the essential data and type it in on the next > screen. There was I thinking I had done a good job and the next minute > I was told to programme like a moron. And they want to *guarantee* that more errors will come in. > > Sometimes well-paid contract work can make the contractor feel like a > prostitute. Does one object to utter stupidity and walk-out or abandon > one's principals and stay ? I think I'd work my way up management... and/or look for another job. mark "actually, did that" ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Was: Re: Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7, is, programming with style
On 9/16/11, m.r...@5-cent.us wrote: > Remember, even among those who studied, a) half of them were in the bottom > of their class, and b) too many are True Believers in the latest > programming (not the P word!) paradigm; y'know, recursion is the answer to > *everything*, or OO, or Part of the problem is sometimes otherwise intelligent customers who heard of the latest buzzword be it XML/Ruby/Web 2.0/HTML5 start demanding that you use it for their application regardless of whether it's relevant or if they really know what it is about . If you try to educate them any other way, they start thinking you're outdated. On top of that, sometimes you have to work with people who are True Believers or Purists... ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Was: Re: Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7, is, programming with style
On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote: > On 9/16/11, m.r...@5-cent.us wrote: >> Remember, even among those who studied, a) half of them were in the bottom >> of their class, and b) too many are True Believers in the latest >> programming (not the P word!) paradigm; y'know, recursion is the answer to >> *everything*, or OO, or > > Part of the problem is sometimes otherwise intelligent customers who > heard of the latest buzzword be it XML/Ruby/Web 2.0/HTML5 start > demanding that you use it for their application regardless of whether > it's relevant or if they really know what it is about . If you try to > educate them any other way, they start thinking you're outdated. Well, you can always lie to those people. :-) I had a situation once when a client asked me to implement something fairly trivial, but insisted that I use C++ (overkill would be an understatement here...). Namely, they heard from some "expert" that all "real programming" is done in C++... Naturally, I implemented the solution as a bash script, and just told them "sure, no problem, it is pure C++". They had no interest (nor the knowledge) to check it, and everyone was happy. :-) I tend to develop a relationship with clients where they trust my decisions, so lying to them for their own benefit now and then doesn't hurt, and I don't consider it too unethical. I also remember the situation where one client received that typical "somefile.exe is a virus" hoax e-mail (Windows users, of course), and insisted that I check and "disinfect" all machines on the premises. There was no point in trying to explain that such e-mails are hoaxes and that the issue is nonexistent. Instead, I just told him "sure, I'll get right on it", and then did absolutely nothing about it. The guy didn't know how to check the presence of a file himself, so tomorrow when he asked me about "the threat", I just replied that all machines have been disinfected and there is nothing to worry about anymore. He went on to commend my prompt reaction to others... ;-) There are lots of such anecdotes. Being a sysadmin is a social skill as much as a technical one. ;-) Best, :-) Marko ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
[CentOS] Was, Re: Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7, is, programming with style and elegance
Keith Roberts wrote: > On Thu, 15 Sep 2011, Always Learning wrote: > > *snip* > >> Sometimes well-paid contract work can make the contractor feel like a >> prostitute. Does one object to utter stupidity and walk-out or abandon >> one's principals and stay ? > > I gues it depends on how much the hourly rate is ;) It depends on your ethics. I've had to relocate 5 times in my life, halfway across the US each time, leaving folks behind. The last time, in '09, with the depression in full swing, I had a choice of staying in Chicago, and taking a third shift job for six months or a year (before they'd let me shift to day), supporting trading firms (that is, rich or wannabe rich assholes do their best to get richer by screwing everyone else), that might eventually have been a lot more money, or taking a good salary working for a federal contractor, and having to relocate *again*, this time to DC. I'm in DC. I'm doing something useful to society, and not prostituting myself. mark ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
[CentOS] Was, Re: Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7, is, programming with style and elegance
Ray Van Dolson wrote: > On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 08:51:23PM +0100, Always Learning wrote: >> On Thu, 2011-09-15 at 10:42 -0700, John R Pierce wrote: >> Not a 'join' insight :-) > > I think this is how we all started learning SQL and writing web > applications... without normalization. And it won't cause you much > grief in simpler use case scenarios with smaller data sizes. > > You might take a stab at learning normalization though. It's really > quite intuitive, helps keep your tables from "column bloat" and you can > offload a lot of the processing to the SQL engine instead of passing First time I was working with SQL, in '91, my manager tried normalizing the tables... with the result that one data file had more key than data in each record, sorry, "row", oops, that's tuple, and it was a HUGE number of rows. I offered a redesign that had a fixed number of datum, and he took that. Took the number of records vastly down. Normalization is a torx screwdriver; it doesn't fit all uses. mark ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
