Re: wise words

Bob Badour wrote:
> I stumbled across some wise words that resonate with me at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs quoted from Eric S.
> Raymond:
>
> "The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase
> that is just good enough."
>
> He was talking about Bell Labs' attempt to replace Unix with a better
> unix-like OS. But his words ring just as true for SQL and a host of
> other computing languages.

A database scientist and a database engineer are walking side by side on the street. They see a beautiful woman on the other side, and want to cross the street, but then someone tells them that if they're heading for that beautiful woman, they can only do so by traveling each time only half of the remaining distance.

Says the scientist : "Well, if that's so, then there's no point in trying, for I know I'll never get there", and he goes on. Says the engineer : "Well, I know equally well I'll never actually get there, but at any rate, I'll surely get close enough", and he got the girl.

My point : technical purity is not everything. Replacing something that's "good enough" with something that's better will only be done if that replacement can be expected to give an acceptable return on the investment required. If that cannot reasonably be expected, then any sensible person (and that includes you, Bob) will stick with what's "good enough".

With apologies to the female part of the audience for the male chauvinist pig attitude implied in the joke. Received on Fri May 19 2006 - 15:52:19 CEST