Re: databases boring? (Re: "Perl is the duct tape)

Steve Nordquist (signa@tfs.net)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 19:58:53 -0500


COBOL is the metal-patching epoxy of the unswept accounting
organization.

David McCusker wrote:

> [EVERYBODY] wrote

> > > > It is curious, though, that free databases are less common than,
> > > > say, free web servers. I think it's because most hackers think
> > > > databases are kind of boring - who'd want to spend so much time
> > > > creating a database program?
>
> I thought this observation was extremely interesting. [Whereas databases

are boredom on a stick.]

I think it's a combination of 2 things:
1- It takes a whole week for a good CS student to scrap up a decent RDBMS,
much less ODBMS.
1.5- Personal experience: Math students near their PhD will forget
'inner product' and also fail to guess (as an MS student will in a hot
second
of scorched speech) 'outer join.' Similarly, BSCS students will manage
to forget logic functions (vs. some longword add meme) except
anecdotally.
2- Neverminding any types available from COM, (E)SQL definitions are
the ones that, tied in, make money (when it's first made, the site hits,

dumpthru of customers, cards & P.O.s coming on a funguble schedule).
2.5- You can use COM to manage Iona's ORBs, if you're that kind of admin.

> It's also boring to work on IronDoc, though partly this is the fault of
> doing something very intricate a second time, at a rate four times less
> than the first full time rate. But even the first time it was boring,
> since following through on the first four day design took forever. It
> always seems to take me ~50 times as long to code or write as to think.
>
> I think I can write databases only because I have an extremely long
> attention span, and because boredom is not lethal. I've known coders
> who shuddered at my descriptions of writing code for weeks at a time
> before being able to execute any of it to see what happens. Most folks
> I know seem unconsciously motivated mainly by boredom avoidance.

Tilt.

> > [ Sundar Narasimhan wrote: ]
> > > Nah. The real reason is that not many universities teach about
> > > databases and "production computer science".

This, after the usual ruses to count the number of users with taste.

> ..... David McCusker, seeking a usable public domain IronDoc alpha this
> summer

"So, it does what?" "Yes."

> Values have meaning only against the context of a set of relationships.

wad_of_cash .&. shot_o_whiskey .= pay
Oh, and Verilog goes into foo and bar about the time it runs into whatever the

VSI has become. I don't suppose they're reccomending wrappers for pin classes

yet either....