Re: Problem is the pl/sql variable can have only 1000 bytes despite being varchar2(4000) is that a bug?

colin_lyse wrote:

> He is a
> bright guy but this was his 1st pl/sql procedure he wrote (he was a web/java
> developer).

Colin, I often wonder about today's programming design and development education at universities and colleges. It seems to me that some very fundemental programming principles are either no longer taught, or not taught as fundementals and glossed over during class.

The two issues about parameters and exception handling.. those are applicable to Java, Pascal, C/C++ and many other languages - not just PL/SQL. So saying that this is his 1st PL/SQL code does not really explain why he got the fundementals wrong.

My oldest is current doing information technology at college and busy at the moment learning Java. I'm watching his course material with interest.

Oh yeah - I write a lot of PL/SQL code. And I mean a lot. I use vi and SQL*Plus. I have never used the PL/SQL debugger package because I have never had need to. Spend many hours in the 80's dry running Cobol code before compiling as we only got sufficient CPU time for 3 compile and links to make a program work. I still dry-run my code today as I type away in vi. I don't use the compile to find syntax errors for me. I very seldom use debuggers to find errors for me as by looking at the code and using what's between your ears usually suffices in finding the error.

Reliance on tools like debuggers, using fancy GUIs just for the sake of using fancy GUIs.. that type of thing really dumbs down a developer. That all said, I have used Delphi since v1 and still find it the best IDE and RAD tool around - and Delphi is all GUI. So it is not that I'm a command line or vi freak despite the above comments. ;-)

--
Billy