Re: Oracle #1? Then why are these still missing...

Kenneth C Stahl wrote:

>My biggest mistake was in not noticing the 'uk' in the originator's email
>address. No wonder the message contained so much whining.

Whining? Is that what we're doing? Personally, I expect more from a package costing several thousand pounds. PL/SQL is supposed to be a 4GL but, from where I'm standing, it looks like a rather bad 1GL.

>How many years have you been around programming 2? 5? Almost twenty years of
>experience has shown me that I have always been able to satisfy the
>requirements of the project design if I'm willing to work hard and not spend
>all of my time moaning and complaining about what some environment lacks.

We all get our projects finished. I've been programming since 1981, you insufferable prick, and PL/SQL is the most feature-poor language I have ever come across. It is by far the worst of the ALGOL based languages (and I've used modula-2 professionally - what a chore).

>As for Feuerstein the "expert" - he is another whiner and complainer and there
>are many instances in his book which indicate that he, like you, simply does
>not understand how the Oracle rdbms and tools operate. I keep his book handy
>for a quick refernence on some algorithms but I'd be embarrassed to turn in a
>project where I coded according to his methods and style. My employers expect
>better quality and I give it to them. Feurerstein's only claim to fame is that
>he wrote a book that got published by O'Reilly and is therefore widely
>available. That does not make him an expert. As for his contention that pl/sql
>is a "programming language" rather than just a progra

Scoop: Man falls off sentence horror! PL/SQL *is* a programming language. Bloody hell, we have a guy that's been designing reports for 20 years, and doesn't know the difference between a program and a programming language, criticising us.

>Weenieism is best kept in academic environments. It doens't work well in the
>real world of programming. Oracle provides a very powerful RDBMS which works in
>a consistant manner and, if used properly, is an excellent choice for any MIS
>setting that requires a database. If you don't like it then go back to IMS, RPG
>or CICS.

MIS is only a small fraction of what we do with our RDBMS. If you're doing something a bit more adventurous than creating a couple of reports for printing on drool-proof paper for the suits, you expect a little more bang for your bucks.

>As for "petty" - If being petty keeps putting large checks in my bank account
>then I'll keep being petty - it has worked pretty well so far and I don't have
>to live in the U.K. I'd never work for Oracle either - they don't pay enough
>and prefer to keep young, inexperienced programmers on their staff because the
>prefer sheep rather than shepards.

Or maybe they talked to you and heard an over-opinionated, ignorant coffin-dodger. Good luck with the fat cheques, though. You'll need them for your geriatric treatments.

To summarise your post:
Oooh, my lumbago's acting up. They don't make programmers like they used to. In my day they were more sturdy. Built from steel they were. We didn't have toilet paper either, no lah-di-dah tri-ply for us, we had sandpaper, we had it rough... etc., etc, ...

To summarise my post:
Shut up.

Gary
--
Gary O'Keefe
gary_at_onegoodidea.com

You know the score - my current employer has nothing to do with what I post Received on Thu Jul 29 1999 - 06:20:18 CDT