[CentOS] Was: Re: Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7, is, programming with style

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Always Learning wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-09-16 at 01:41 +0800, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
>> On 9/16/11, Always Learning <centos at u61.u22.net> wrote:
<snip>
> 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*. <shakes head> I left behind at several jobs CICS code that had
in it PERFORM 1000-DUMMY-PARAGRAPH THROUGH 1000-DUMMY-PARAGRAPH EXIT WHILE
<an entire while loop, that may actually have called another subroutine>,
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"