nemesis wrote:
> in my place, people seem to love using cursors and manually looping over it
> rather than using a simpler and much faster INNER JOIN.

I took over (technically) at one place and made the rule that such was 
disallowed. You were not allowed to loop over a result set and put its 
contents into another SQL call. I sometimes spent half a day figuring 
out the right SQL to accomplish something, but I got it working about 
six times as fast.

Nowadays, I get stuff that's too complicated to do that. Several 
instances of looping over a result set and building a "Select from X 
where X.blah in (....)" where the .... is built programatically based on 
another SQL call.  Or places I'm pretty sure I could figure out but 
don't have the half a day to spend.  Or stuff I'm pretty sure SQL can 
do, but I can't figure out how to (mostly with GROUP-BY selection type 
stuff).

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> How recently has UNIX not used source distributions for programs? How
>> much UNIX shareware could you download as executables, say, in 1998?
> 
> I don't quite understand how this has to do with anything in the discussion.

Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with 
each other, even at the source level.  (See autoconf)

>> DOS, Win98, WinXP.
> 
> Win9x did not support DOS programs: they simply had DOS included to handle
> those.

DOS programs ran in a window, just like they do now.

> Single vendor, single solution.

Yes? So?

> 
>> And before you say "Windows NT is the same OS as Windows 98", remember
>> all the people that accuse MS of stealing Windows NT from DEC? :-)
> 
> WNT <- VMS
> 
> same engineer...

So, different operating systems. You're making my point for me. :-)

>> Show me an executable that runs on TRS-DOS and CP/M?
> 
> Thank God the industry has settled on standards for interoperation.

Yep.

>> If what you're saying is that MS being a monopoly is what made this
>> possible, then sure, I might agree with that.
> 
> yes, that's it exactly.

So you agree with me, but think MS is bad. OK. I'm not disputing MS is 
bad. (Not agreeing, but not disputing. That's just a different 
conversation.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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> I beg to differ.

I don't.  You are just blaming MS because they write some of the most 
complex software that is used by a huge number of people.  Of course there 
will be bugs, they're not writing an OS for a nuclear reactor, or a game for 
an 32K machine - it simply isn't profitable to write big bits of software 
for home/office use that are totally bullet-proof.

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Warp wrote:

>   That seems to be a rather common thing people do. It's like they read
> the first page of the SQL book they were given and skipped the rest because
> it "works".

I find this deeply depressing...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:

> Nowadays, I get stuff that's too complicated to do that. Several 
> instances of looping over a result set and building a "Select from X 
> where X.blah in (....)" where the .... is built programatically based on 
> another SQL call.  Or places I'm pretty sure I could figure out but 
> don't have the half a day to spend.  Or stuff I'm pretty sure SQL can 
> do, but I can't figure out how to (mostly with GROUP-BY selection type 
> stuff).

Given time, you could probably integrate the entire thing into one giant 
SQL statement. You'd probably find that you can actually simplify it 
down to something rather smaller once it stated all in one operation. 
And that the DB engine can do some pretty impressive optimisations after 
that too.

OTOH, if you haven't got enough time to do it... what can you do?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> And how much software did you buy before MS was around? Don't confuse
> correlation with causation.

Quite a lot. (Well, my parents anyway, not me personally. I didn't have 
any money...)

We had premptive multitasking operating systems and large C compilers 
and ray tracers and modellers and music sequencing software and complex 
computer games and so on and so forth. And they all worked properly. Any 
programs that didn't were laughed at and thrown away. (Heck, we didn't 
even have protected execution yet, so a single bug could shut down your 
entire machine. And yet this virtually never happened...)

> The difference is the scale. Before MS became big (and I'm talking before
> around 1988 here) software was a niche market. Small, specialised, very few
> users, small.

I don't know that it was that specialised - from the number of consumer 
magazines about it on the shelves, I wouldn't have thought so. I don't 
have hard numbers though...

> I'm emphasising small, because small software is 'easy' to write.

I don't really see how the software M$ writes is any "bigger" or "more 
complex" than what existed before.

>> After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work
>> properly.
> 
> Honestly, I'll take MS's products any day over some of the crap that I've
> seen from ISVs

M$ certainly don't produce the *worst* software on the market - I've 
seen crud that's much worse. OTOH, nobody buys that stuff. People do buy 
M$ products.

I've also seen software that's much more reliable. *cough* POV-Ray. When 
was the last time you saw it crash? Similarly, have you *ever* seen 
Linux crash? [A huge number of Linux applications are hopelessly buggy, 
but the OS itself seems rock-steady as far as I can tell.]

Obviously, when you're not being paid to produce software, you can spend 
"infinite" resources on debugging. But take, for example, NI Reaktor, or 
Steinburg Cubase. I have yet to see either of those crash, and they're 
far more complicated than M$ Word. (I believe they might even be cheaper 
too... I'd have to check prices.)

>> The people who write the cheques? Or the people who have to *use* the
>> software? They aren't the same people. ;-)
> 
> I'm talking about Joe Average User going down to the shop to buy a boxed
> piece of software.

I think if you could actually explain to Joe Average "hey, *this* one 
NEVER EVER CRASHES", that'd be pretty impressed.

Of course, you can write that on the box, but why would anyone believe 
what it says on the box? It's easy to claim your software has fewer bugs 
- even M$ claim that! (Surely that should be illegal under the trade 
descriptions act?)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:

> Ummmm. I'll have to beg to differ with you here.  How much software did 
> you use before MS was around?

Quite a lot, actually.

>> After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work 
>> properly. If M$ can be credited with one original invention, this is it. 
> 
> I'll disagree with this one too. In some areas, software is like that. 
> Not in all fields, however. When's the last time your DVD player crashed?

DVD player? Actually never.

[It does, however, fail to correctly play a number of DVDs that play 
perfectly OK in other players. And it was NOT a cheap player, by any 
stretch of the imagination. Panasonic too.]

My MP3 player? Roughly once every 4 days. (And it HURTS when it crashes!)

Then I took the firmware supplied by the people who designed and built 
the device and replaced it by something written by a bunch of Internet 
heads in their spare time who didn't even have access to the design 
specs. And you know what? It has about 4x the functionallity, and it 
never, ever, under any circumstances, crashes.

Does that not seem wrong to you? That a bunch of guys in their spare 
time could do a better job than the people you paid money to?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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scott wrote:
>> I beg to differ.
> 
> I don't.

There's a surprise...

> You are just blaming MS because they write some of the most 
> complex software that is used by a huge number of people.  Of course 
> there will be bugs - it simply isn't profitable to write big bits 
> of software for home/office use that are totally bullet-proof.

No, 100% bug-free would be pretty damn hard. But M$ is the largest and 
most profitable corporation that has ever existed in the history of 
mankind. If they actually cared, they could produce a vastly superior 
product and still make a stackload of money. The point is THEY DON'T 
CARE. They produce a barely-functional product and people still buy is. 
So why bother making a quality product when people will buy crap?

Of course, if there were actually some viable competition, people would 
realise that it is *not* "normal" for computer software to be buggy and 
unreliable, and people would switch. Unfortunately, thanks to M$, this 
situation will never arise. If anybody starts making really good 
software, they'll just get bought...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> If they actually cared, they could produce a vastly superior product and 
> still make a stackload of money.

But it won't be as much money, compared to if they got on and started 
working on their next OS or whatever.  That's the point.  They are a 
company - they act to generate maximum profit for their shareholders.

I've said this before, but why do so many people think that they know a 
better strategy for Microsoft to increase their profits?  I'm pretty sure MS 
employs some of the best guys in the business for making strategic decisions 
like this, if you think you are better than them then you're in the wrong 
job!!!

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scott wrote:

> I've said this before, but why do so many people think that they know a 
> better strategy for Microsoft to increase their profits?  I'm pretty 
> sure MS employs some of the best guys in the business for making 
> strategic decisions like this, if you think you are better than them 
> then you're in the wrong job!!!

The problem is that M$ extracts maximum profit basically by ripping 
their customers off.

If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I 
wouldn't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the 
fact that they charge a fortune for very low-quality products, and get 
away with it. And they get away with it precisely because of the 
underhanded techniques they use to eliminate all competition.

This stuff should be illegal... Oh, wait. It is. And M$ has been 
convicted. Several times. And yet still they are allowed to trade with 
no sanctions at all. Great.

Apparently, if you make enough money, the law does not apply to you...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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