Re: tools for PL/SQL development

From: Mark C. Stock <mcstockX_at_Xenquery>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:03:07 -0500
Message-ID: <MbadnS36qIS3x6vd4p2dnA@comcast.com>

in line... ;-} mcs

sorry -- my GUI generated it ;-)

| > the advise to stick with SQL*Plus until you know what you're doing is
good
| > for only about the first 10 minutes of your Oracle career
|
| Strongly disagree.

that's why we're counter-posting

|
| > yes, you need to know how SQL*Plus works, and you need to understand the
| > what the SQL is doing, but where is the advantage to using vi/notepad
and
| > SHOW ERRORS rather than an honest-to-goodness programmer's editor that
| > highlights keywords and syntax (so you can easily see where you forgot
to
| > terminate a string) and highlights the error locations?
|
| > ;-{ mcs
|
| The advantages are substantial. I tried letting my students use TOAD,
| SQL*Navigator, etc. little learning takes place. They don't learn to
| use their brains and their eyes. They expect the GUI to do it for them.
| And it does if you are talking about syntactic errors but those are the
| easy errors. If you are still making syntax errors after your first
| few months you need to consider a career change. Yes we all make typos
| but even SHOW ERROR catches those.

it'd say your students have a problem other than the GUI -- have you set proper expectations?

to be fair, i've had students that die in a gui because they don't understand windows, ending up with multiple SQL Edit windows open, and it got in their way. but i would never want any of those students on a project

however, i've seen good students choke on sql*plus's idiosyncracies and bugginess (Input trunctated to 18 characters -- invalid character --;' -- after simple edit)

in my experience reasonably intelligent (i know, big assumption) and intelligently reasonable (even a rarer breed) developers are much more productive with a gui because it presents the information in a clearer, more quickly discernable fashion -- which is basically what our goal is in our apps, isn't it?

example, on my current project, a colleague had previously only used SQL*Plus and the rest of the team was using TOAD. when he finally decided to try TOAD, his productivity slip up nicely, and his frustration level went down, and his code improved as he was able to more quickly identify syntax problems and focus on the logic

from you other post

|Want to guess who writes the most error-free code in the shortest
|amount of time? Want to guess whose executes more quickly and scales
|better?

Want to guess who designs the best house in the shortest amount of time? Want to guess whose buildings are more functional and have higher resale? Obviously it's the architects that uses a t-square and a #2 hand-sharpened pencil ;-)

stupid architects design stupid buildings with whatever tools they do or don't use -- same principle applies to software development

It's not the tool, it's how you use it. GUIs are not evil, text editors are not sacred (and visa-versa). But logical thinking (applied to programming logic and to choice of tools) is the essential skill. If a student/developer can't define the logic to solve a problem, neither the language nor the tool used to code in that language really matter much at all.

|
| The far larger issue is logic errors and those can not be caught with
| any tool and require training the human brain. Something I have not
| observed when people rely on GUIs.

agree -- but illogical to use this argument to bash good tools ('don't even think of using a gui because some people out there have false expectations and never bother to learn good programming skills' -- glad they don't use that logic when i applied for my driver's license!)

i've used my quota of exclamation points -- cheers!

|
Received on Fri Feb 20 2004 - 13:03:07 CST