Posted by Shelly on 09/17/07 17:02

"Steve" <no.one@example.com> wrote in message
news:3rwHi.805$3C.788@newsfe05.lga...
>> Moral: Programming, as well as life, is not always an either-or.
>> Sometimes a compromise/hybrid is the best solution.
>>
>> --
>> Shelly
>
> ahhh, but shelly, the thing i like most is that in programming, it is
> always either/or: on/off. to say otherwise is to not know programming. the
> same holds true for life. you either do or do not. any notions about the
> nobility or superiority of human action in his contemplation of life are
> simply false, save the fact that there is none of either. do or do not is
> all that remains and that directly linked to his own survivability - as is
> the impetous of all animals.
>
> compromise. chuckle.

So, I take it that if you fed a meal which is a wonderfully prepared, 10
pound, filet mignon you either (a) eat all of it or (b) eat none of it?

or,

If you are faced with a court appearance for excessive speeding in your car
you should either be acquitted or should get the death sentence?

On one project about 25 years ago I needed to modify a very large
application that was written in Fortran. I needed dynamic allocation.
According to you, I should have been faced with two choices. One was to
emulate dynamic allocation by setting aside a large part of memory and doing
my own allocation from that memory heap. A second would have been to
totally rewrite that entire (largggggeeeee) application in C. I chose a
"compromise". I wrote a small module in C and used that in conjunction with
the rest of the Fortran code.

The point here is that there are two extremes in handling his situation.
Either avoid a database and just use the file system, or avoid the file
system and put all of the contents of the file into a blob field in the
database. Often, the better way is to use the database as a rapid search
engine for a file in the file system.

I guess you aren't married? I have been for over four decades. Believe me,
"all or nothing" just doesn't work. Even with a swich for the lights you
can always add a dimmer.

By the way, I have been programming four over forty years. We are not
talking ones and zeros, true or false, here. We are talking design
philosophy -- and that if usually a compromise among various alternatives to
achieve the most efficient results in the shortest time for the least cost.

Shelly

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